China Rejects Need For Further Investigation Into Origin Of Coronavirus

More than four million people have died around the world since it first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, and the global economy has been paralyzed.

The belated and widely politicized picture by the WHO's team of international experts went to Wuhan in January 2021 to prepare a Phase I report, co-written with their Chinese counterparts. It failed to trace how the virus got started.

On Thursday, the WHO called on China to share raw data from COVID-19 cases at the earliest to revive the investigation into the origin of the disease.

China responded and initially the investigation was substantial and asked for more data to be politically motivated rather than scientific information.

"We oppose the political report released after WHO's visit to Wuhan in January and reject the joint report," Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaosu told reporters. "We support scientific tracing."

The report said that although the virus is most likely to have been transmitted from tigers to humans by intermediate animals, the leak from Wuhan's virology lab is "extremely unlikely."

He said the findings and recommendations of the WHO-China joint report have been supported by the international community and the scientific community.

“Future global traceability work can only be done and carried forward on the basis of this report, rather than starting afresh.”

Lab Leakage Principle

Against the backdrop of China's reluctance to have outside investigators, experts have pondered the theory that the virus may have come out of the laboratory, once the U.S.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also said a preliminary investigation into Wuhan's virology lab was not complete, while President Joe Biden ordered an independent investigation from the US intelligence community into the origins of the virus in May.

The WHO last month angered Beijing for including an audit of Wuhan laboratories for the second phase of the investigation, with Deputy Health Minister Zheng Yixin saying the plan shows "disrespect for common sense and arrogance about science".

Danish scientist Peter Ben Emberek, who led the international expedition to Wuhan, said one of the possible hypotheses is how the virus spread from tigers to humans when infected laboratory workers took samples from the field.

He told Danish public channel TV2 that the suspects were not from the Wuhan area and that the only people he could have been contacted were Wuhan laboratory workers.

Ben Ambrek previously admitted in an interview with Science magazine that "politics was always in the room with us" during the Wuhan visit, which was delayed after China initially withheld accreditation to the entry of international researchers.