G7 nations were unable to agree a formal joint statement on tackling the coronavirus because the Trump administration wanted to call the pandemic the “Wuhan virus”.



While the foreign ministers of the US, the UK, Japan, France, Italy, Germany, and Canada agreed a set of priorities and actions on Wednesday to respond to the unprecedented challenge of the outbreak, they failed to reach consensus on a joint declaration because of the US position.

An early draft of a potential common statement circulated by the US to the other delegations called the disease “Wuhan Virus” throughout and recalled how "from the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government’s own accounts, the COVID-19 outbreak began in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, in December 2019, or earlier."

The draft, which BuzzFeed News has seen, was highly critical of China’s response to the crisis. "Countries have a special obligation to share information about potential global health risks. When information is restricted, the consequences can be devastating for people across the globe," the document read.

It went on to say: "This is particularly relevant for the Wuhan virus, which could have been halted or mitigated if China had not suppressed critical scientific data when it was first available. We call on China and other countries to commit to full transparency, so that we can rapidly find solutions to this virus and so the world does not face another pandemic in the future."

The G7 dispute was first reported by the German magazine Spiegel.

After the meeting, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted: “With the unprecedented global challenge of confronting the #WuhanVirus, cooperation with our partners is more important than ever.”