A marble lion is seen with a face mask in front of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue in New York, the US, July 8, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

Chinese netizens mocked the US as the world's most hypocritical country in politicizing the coronavirus issue, and suggested US hospitals send their coronavirus data directly to the Oval Office to save government time in manipulating the outbreak for its presidential campaign.

The Trump administration confirmed on Wednesday that it had shifted control of hospitals' COVID-19 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to the Department of Health and Human Services. Some data, including the current in-patient and intensive care unit bed occupancy, were later found missing from the CDC website after the announcement, CNN reported.

The Trump administration's control of the data and sudden disappearance of the data raised questions from US experts on the transparency of the data on the coronavirus. It also triggered widespread discussions on Chinese social media, with many netizens mocking the behavior as a clumsy and self-deceptive attempt by the US government to conceal the truth of the outbreak, and cover up its failures in handling its domestic pandemic response.

On China's Twitter-like Weibo, some topics related to the US data handover had received 200 million views as of press time on Friday. Chinese users said the Trump administration has peeled off its disguise in manipulating coronavirus data.

A netizen named Laobanniang joked that Trump should change his campaign motto to "out of sight, out of mind" in relation to the country's pandemic response. "With COVID-19 data in his hands, Trump will have no more problems singing his own praises in the fight against the coronavirus," she wrote.

Some netizens asked US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the US Embassy in China, which repeatedly criticized China for "concealing data and being non-transparent," to explain what their government wants to do.

"Is your face hurting, Mr. Pompeo? How can you judge other countries' coronavirus response when your government is too lazy to cover its dirty deeds," one netizen said.

Some netizens mentioned Trump's previous controversial remarks; for example, when he said in June that the US testing was "too good" and "too much" that it made the country "look bad," as it reported high numbers of confirmed cases, Fox News reported.

Criticizing President Trump's bizarre logic, users on Weibo questioned whether the takeover was another attempt by the US government to conceal the actual number of infections and deaths to make the country's situation look "too good."

There is a big possibility that the Trump administration is attempting to manipulate COVID-19 data, which have made the US government very embarrassed with dramatically increasing infections and deaths, said Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.

Trump's approval rating has plummeted due to his terrible pandemic response, Lü told the Global Times on Friday. "As a result, it won't be surprising that he may do anything for votes, including whitewashing the US' serious epidemic situation with lies," he said.

Though Trump is desperate to win reelection, Lü said he doesn't think he can win because his administration has messed up the whole country. "This is the most chaotic administration in US history," he said.