China on Wednesday accused the US of “spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation” as the theory resurfaced that the coronavirus emerged from a Wuhan laboratory, while urging Washington to open its virology facilities to scrutiny. Led by the US, pressure is mounting for a new probe into the origins of Covid-19 after a World Health Organization (WHO) mission to China, beset by delays and dogged by political baggage, returned inconclusive findings.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has returned to the spotlight after a report in The Wall Street Journal, citing US intelligence, said three lab workers there were hospitalised in November 2019 with coronavirus-like symptoms, a month before the pandemic’s first declared case.
The newspaper also said researchers had collected samples seven years earlier from a mine in southwestern China, where miners had contracted a mysterious illness from a new, bat-borne coronavirus. Repeating an earlier denial of the report, Zhao Lijian, spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, accused the US of “spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation such as a laboratory leak”.
The concept that the killer virus leaked from a Chinese lab was initially fuelled by, amongst others, the administration of former US president Donald Trump. Zhao mentioned it was “disrespectful” to the WHO probe to revive the theory, and risked an “undermining of global solidarity to fight the virus”.
Since infecting its first victims within the central Chinese metropolis of Wuhan in late 2019, the pathogen has struck virtually each nation on the earth, killing greater than 3.4 million individuals and eviscerating nationwide economies. “If the US actually needs full transparency then it ought to, like China did, invite WHO consultants to go to the US and examine,” Zhao added.
“Open up Fort Detrick military base as early as possible, and all the bio labs the US has around the world,” he mentioned, referring to a US analysis facility in Maryland. The long-delayed report, by the workforce of worldwide consultants despatched to Wuhan and their Chinese counterparts, drew no agency conclusions on the origins of the pandemic.
Instead, the WHO-led workforce mentioned the virus more than likely jumped from bats to people by way of an intermediate animal. Initially, the skilled report mentioned a concept involving the virus leaking from a lab was “extraordinarily unlikely”.
After the report was released, however, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted all theories remained on the table.
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