China dismissed the World Health Organization’s (WHO) call for a new investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 virus on Friday, saying that scientific research should take precedence over political efforts to figure out how the disease began.
According to a senior Chinese diplomat, the proposal was also made without full consultation with member states.
“We oppose political tracing… and abandoning the joint report”, which was issued after a WHO expert team visited Wuhan in January, vice foreign minister Ma Zhaoxu told reporters. “We support scientific tracing,” Ma added.
The Covid-19 virus first appeared in late 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan before spreading throughout and outside of China, resulting in the worst pandemic in a century.
According to the widely followed coronavirus tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University in the United States, the pandemic has claimed more than 4.3 million lives and infected more than 205.3 million people.
Ma told a briefing in Beijing with 31 representatives and ambassadors from 29 countries that the WHO secretariat recently put forward a working proposal for the next phase without fully consulting its member countries, which was rejected and questioned.
Ma went on to say that Beijing was always willing to help in tracing Covid-19’s origins and had never refused. China, on the other hand, rejects the politicisation of the investigation, according to Chinese state media.
According to Xinhua, China is continuing to conduct “follow-up and supplementary” research into the origins of Covid-19, as specified in the WHO joint report.
To find zoonotic origins and transmission pathways, the next phase of the Covid-19 origin-tracing work should be done only by scientists, according to Ma.
On Thursday, the WHO urged all governments to work together to speed up research into the pandemic’s origins and “depoliticize the situation.”
Ma told Chinese state media last month that 48 countries had sent a joint letter to the WHO director-general about the Covid-19 virus’s origin.
