White House Adviser Peter Navarro on Monday accused China of “profiteering” amid the coronavirus pandemic and said Beijing has been distributing low-quality or fake coronavirus testing kits. Navarro, a staunch China critic, said testing was crucial to reopening the U.S. economy.

“That’s where, perhaps, we can find people who are immune, that can be in the workplace in a more safe environment. But we can’t have China, for example, bringing in those fake tests and counterfeit tests, because that’s going to be very disruptive,” Navarro said in an interview with the “Fox and Friends” program. “There’s a lot of these antibody tests coming in from China now that are low quality, false readings and things like that.”

Navarro also accused China of covering up the virus in the early stages of the outbreak.

“They could have contained it in Wuhan,” he said. “They didn’t. They seeded the world with this, with hundreds of thousands of Chinese getting on aircraft to Milan, to New York and other places.”

Navarro said that as the virus spread, Beijing “vacuumed up the world for personal protective equipment,” allowing the government to profit from the situation.

China has denied covering up the outbreak, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian earlier in April saying "there has never been any concealment, and we'll never allow any concealment," regarding the number of cases in the country. Zhao has also spread a conspiracy theory that the U.S. military brought the virus to China.

President Trump has blamed Beijing for the virus, sometimes referring to it as the “China virus” in March. Trump has since stopped using the term, possibly due to backlash from Asian-American advocacy groups.

The coronavirus originated at an animal and seafood market in Wuhan, China, and has since spread across the world. As of Monday at 5:35 p.m., there are over 3 million cases of the virus in the world, with the global death toll over 200,000.

RELATED STORIES
Coronavirus China Trump