As the investigation into the origins of COVID-19 ramps up, the Communist regime in China is struggling to ward off the “lab leak” theory and pass blame elsewhere.
China says it’s put forward an alternate solution for a second probe into the origins of COVID-19 that should span multiple countries, Beijing’s latest move to counter a push by the U.S. for a deeper investigation into the theory the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab.
China, where the coronavirus that caused the pandemic first emerged, submitted a counter for how the World Health Organization should proceed with the second leg of their investigation.
Without any elaboration, China’s foreign minister Zhao claimed many countries have expressed their concern, dismay, and opposition to a second-phase investigation by the World Health Organization.
China’s move came as the U.S. and its allies have accused Beijing of stonewalling a phase-two study into the virus’s origin, including an investigation of the possibility the virus may have escaped from a Chinese biosecurity lab where similar coronaviruses have been studied. China has opposed such studies, saying it will not participate.
Beijing and its top health experts have vehemently refuted the hypothesis that the virus was leaked from a lab in Wuhan, saying no such virus was studied there before COVID first emerged in 2019.
Subsequent studies have been planned following an initial, closely-watched probe by a joint team of international experts assembled by the WHO — and their Chinese counterparts — in Wuhan in February.
The experts concluded that the virus was most likely to have an animal source and passed through intermediary hosts before eventually being able to transmit between humans. They called the lab leak theory extremely unlikely based on the evidence reviewed and a visit to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The conclusion has been challenged by western governments and other global experts, who argued that the group assembled by the WHO lacked qualifications to determine the possibility of a lab leak. The WHO’s own secretary-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has said the assessment wasn’t extensive enough and vowed for more studies in the hope of reaching stronger conclusions.
Author: Nolan Sheridan
