A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Beijing complained on Sunday that the debate was further politicized. The US should stop “attacking and slandering China”.
No clear result about the origin
Similar to a previous investigation by the World Health Organization, the US secret services had not come to a clear conclusion in their report published at the end of August. The secret services classified both an animal-to-human transmission of the virus and a laboratory accident in China as “plausible hypotheses”, but complained about the lack of samples and data.
Report: Beijing obstructs investigations
The National Intelligence Directorate commissioned by US President Joe Biden had made further parts of the report public this week. The paper therefore emphasizes even more that a clarification of the original question is not possible without new information. Cooperation with China is necessary, but Beijing is hindering international investigations.
“No matter how often this report is published and how many versions are put together, nothing can change the fact that it is a purely political and false report,” said China’s Foreign Office spokesman Wang Wenbin. The mere fact that secret services are used in the search for origin is “clear evidence” of the political nature of the debate.
The corona pandemic, which has now fallen victim to over five million people worldwide, began in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of 2019. It was soon speculated that the virus could have escaped in an accident from the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, which is researching coronaviruses. The Chinese government vigorously denies this.
Accordingly, the WHO investigation was politically highly controversial. An international WHO team was only able to visit Wuhan in January of this year – more than a year after the virus was discovered. Their report was published in late March but did not provide any clear results. The so-called laboratory theory classified the WHO experts as “extremely unlikely”.
However, doubts quickly arose about the investigation and the report. Many countries expressed concern that international experts had been denied access to important data during their investigation in China. The Chinese government vehemently rejects further investigations, as requested by WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
