The Chinese government is facing multiple lawsuits amounting to trillions of US dollars, over the way it has handled the coronavirus pandemic.

The Communist Party of China is being sued in multiple class actions - which are arguably nothing more than symbolic - over allegations of negligence and cover-up of the COVID-19 outbreak, hoarding medical supplies, and even deliberately developing the virus and spreading it.

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Meanwhile, a number of countries, including Australia, are calling for an international inquiry into China’s handling of the crisis.

Foreign Affairs Minister Senator Marise Payne said Australia’s number one trading partner must reveal to the world how and why the outbreak occurred in Wuhan, in the central province of Hubei, late last year.

Payne said an independent review should identify the genesis of the virus, how it was dealt with, how China shared information and its interaction with the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Chinese President Xi Jinping talks by video with patients and medical workers at the Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. Credit: Xie Huanchi / AP

“I think the key to going forward in the context of these issues is transparency,” she told the ABC on Sunday.

“Transparency from China most certainly. Transparency from all of the key countries across the world who will be part of any review that takes place.”

The call for an independent inquiry has the support of the federal opposition.

Multiple lawsuits

Weighing in on the growing international anger being levelled at China, there are at least three lawsuits emanating from the US, where more than 40,000 people have now died from the virus.

A Florida legal firm says it has thousands of claimants from multiple countries, and is suing for $US6 trillion over allegations China and its president, Xi Jinping, mishandled the original outbreak and then sought to cover it up.

Chevron Right Icon ‘Our goal is to expose the truth.’

In a statement issued by the Miami-based Berman Law Group, Chief strategist Jeremy Alters said China’s leaders had to be held accountable for their actions.

“Our goal is to expose the truth,” he said.

Hoarding medical supplies

Earlier this month, the New York Post reported on a group of frontline healthcare workers also taking class action through the Berman group, over allegations of hoarding badly needed personal protective equipment and selling it for profit.

“It’s almost straight out of a movie - ‘let’s cause the world to get a virus and let’s profit off of it’,” Alters said.

“In New York, we have doctors and nurses in garbage bags.”

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Also in the conspiracy theory corner sits Texan lawyer Larry Klayman.

He is suing China for $20 trillion over allegations Xi authorised the CCP to develop a COVID-19 “illegal biological weapon”.

The lawsuits come amid unsubstantiated theories that the coronavirus emerged in a Chinese medical laboratory and not, as currently believed, in a wet market selling wild exotic animals for human consumption in Wuhan.