The Chinese ambassador to Ireland has said US President Donald Trump’s continued attempt to label COVID-19 the ‘Chinese virus’ is “inhumane.”

He Xiangdong spoke to Newstalk Breakfast after President Trump said the World Health Organisation (WHO) was a “puppet of China.”

The US president has threatened to permanently freeze funding to the organisation and reconsider US membership is his concerns are not addressed.

He has also continued to refer to the virus as the "Chinese Virus" - insisting Beijing failed to share information that could have given the world crucial time to prepare and prevent it from spreading so widely.

“I would say that it is inhumane to put a name to the virus on any country,” said He Xiangdong.

“It won’t provide any real help with the disease. It will only cause discrimination.”

US President Donald Trump reveals that he is taking Hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis against COVID-19, 19-05-2020. Image: Doug Mills/The New York Times

He said there are a “lot of blame games” against China in regard to the country’s response to the outbreak and insisted Beijing was open to an international investigation.

“Regarding Chain’s reaction to pandemic, I would say that we have done our best to find the information and to share the information with the WHO and with the international community,” he said.

“If you look at the timeline of the disease, on December 27th, a Chinese doctor found the first three cases of COVID-19 – but at that time people thought it was a kind of pneumonia with an unknown cause.

“In the coming few days, China shared the information with the WHO and in the coming week, China shared the information with the international community.

“In less than two weeks, Chinese scientists found the genome sequence information of the virus and we shared the information with the WHO and the international community.

“I have to say that is very quick because it was a totally new virus. At that time nobody knew any information about the virus because it was a totally new one and we had to add up every piece of the information piece by piece.”

The WHO has agreed to launch an independent review of its response to the virus and the EU is pushing for an "impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation" of the international response.

Mr Xiangdong said Beijing is open to the investigations.

“We are open to the investigation because we need to investigate the origin of the virus,” he said.

“It will help us to know better about the virus. It will help us to find a solution, to find a vaccine, and it will help us to be better prepared for the next virus, for the next pandemic.

“The point is, independent from what? Is it independence from science? Is it independence from facts or is it independence from political intervention?”

You can listen back to the full interview here: