US President, Donald Trump has said he was very disappointed with China’s failure to contain Covid-19 in a recent interview.

Trump said the pandemic had cast a pall over his January trade deal with Beijing and that he had no interest in speaking to President Xi Jinping at the moment.

Trump said; “They should have never let this happen, So I make a great trade deal and now I say this doesn’t feel the same to me. The ink was barely dry and the plague came over. And it doesn’t feel the same to me.”

Trump has previously often said he has a good relationship with Xi, and has been reluctant to single him out personally for criticism over coronavirus.

“But I just, right now I don’t want to speak to him,” Trump said.

Asked what measures he intended to take against China, he said: “There are many things we could do … We could cut off the whole relationship.”

“Now, if you did, what would happen? You’d save $500bn,” Trump said, referring to estimated US annual imports from China, which he has previously referred to as lost money.

Global cases have passed 4.438 million, with more than 302,000 deaths.

The US ranked first in cases (1.47 million) and deaths (85,884), according to the Johns Hopkins university tracker.

The growing war of words between China and the US came as Brazil passed the grim milestone of 200,000 infections, with just under 14,000 deaths.

President Jair Bolsonaro urged business leaders to push for the lifting of lockdown orders in financial centre of Sao Paulo to help the economy. He has been widely criticised for his approach to the pandemic.

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Mexico also reported a deteriorating situation, with 2,409 new infections, the biggest one-day rise in cases since the pandemic began. It also confirmed 257 additional coronavirus deaths, bringing the total to just under 4,500. More than 42,595 people have been infected.

In Russia, which currently has the second most infections worldwide with 252,245, authorities in Moscow said clinics would begin mass random testing of residents for coronavirus antibodies on Friday. There have been doubts over the official death toll from the virus of 2,305, after authorities ascribed the deaths of more than 60% of coronavirus patients in April to other causes.

The Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia andEstonia, on Russia’s western edge, opened their borders to each other at the stroke of midnight on Friday, creating the first “travel bubble” within the European Union in a bid to jump-start economies broken down by the coronavirus pandemic.

Citizens and residents of the three generally sparsely populated countries will be free to travel within the region, though anyone entering from outside will need to self-isolate for 14 days.