China has urged the World Health Organization (WHO) to do an origin-tracing study of the COVID-19 virus in the US after an expert team investigating the origins of the virus in Wuhan said that there is no evidence of its circulation in any animal species in the country.
“We hope that following China’s example, the US side will act in a positive, science-based and cooperative manner on the origin-tracing issue (and) invite WHO experts in for an origin-tracing study,” said Wang Wenbin, Foreign Ministry spokesman.
Similarly, Zeng Guang, chief epidemiologist at China’s Center for Disease Control, said the US should now be “the focus” of global efforts to trace the virus.
The WHO team had recently stated four hypotheses on how the virus spread. Peter Ben Embarek, the head of the team said, “Our initial findings suggest that introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely passway and one that will require more studies and more specific targeted research.”
“The findings suggest that a laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus into the human population,” he added.
Dismissing that the virus got leaked from Wuhan’s institute of virology, Mr. Embarek had said, “We also looked at Wuhan’s institute of virology, the laboratory and the state of the laboratory, and it was very unlikely that anything could escape from such a place. We also know that lab incidents are, of course, extremely rare.”
Concerns
The US had raised concern over the findings and suggested the possibility of the Chinese government’s interference in the WHO’s investigation.
“We have deep concerns about the way in which the early findings of the COVID-19 investigation were communicated and questions about the process used to reach them,” said Jake Sullivan, US National Security Adviser.
He had stressed on the importance of an investigation that is “free from intervention or alteration by the Chinese government” into the origin of COVID-19. “To better understand this pandemic and prepare for the next one, China must make available its data from the earliest days of the outbreak,” he had added.
The COVID-19 virus has affected over 110 million people globally and upended the economy by plunging it into one of the worst recessions in history.
