Thursday, 27 May 2021 (YJC) _ After President Biden ordered a review of intelligence about where the virus emerged, China’s U.S. embassy said Politicizing the origins of COVID-19 would hamper further investigations.
Politicizing the origins of COVID-19 would hamper further investigations and undermine global efforts to curb the pandemic, China’s U.S. embassy said after President Joe Biden ordered a review of intelligence about where the virus emerged.
The embassy in Washington said in a statement on its website on Wednesday evening “some political forces have been fixated on political manipulation and (the) blame game.”
As the World Health Organization (WHO) prepares to begin a second phase of studies into the origins of COVID-19, China has been under pressure to give investigators more access amid allegations that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a laboratory specializing in coronavirus research in the city of Wuhan.
China has repeatedly denied the lab was responsible, saying the United States and other countries were trying to distract from their own failures to contain the virus.
Biden said on Wednesday that U.S. intelligence agencies were divided about whether COVID-19 “emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident.”
Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health with the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said China’s lack of openness was a major factor behind the resurgence of the lab leak theory.
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