A senior health official said that China on Thursday (July 22) rejected the World Health Organization’s (WHO) plan to conduct a second phase of the origin of the coronavirus, which included the hypothesis that the virus might leak from a Chinese laboratory.
The World Health Organization this month proposed a second phase of research on the origin of the Chinese coronavirus, including an audit of laboratories and markets in Wuhan, and called on the authorities to increase transparency.
“We will not accept such a traceability plan because it ignores common sense and goes against science in some respects,” Zeng Yixin, deputy minister of the National Health Commission (NHC), told reporters.
Zeng said that when he read the WHO plan for the first time, he was shocked because it listed the hypothesis that China’s violation of the laboratory protocol caused the virus to leak during the research process.
The head of the WHO stated in early July that investigations into the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic in China have been hindered due to the lack of original data on the first few days of transmission in China.
Mr. Zeng reiterated China’s position that due to privacy considerations, some data cannot be fully shared.
“We hope that the WHO will seriously consider the considerations and suggestions put forward by Chinese experts, truly treat the tracing of the COVID-19 virus as a scientific issue, and get rid of political interference,” Zeng said.
He said that China opposes the politicization of this research.
The origin of the virus is still disputed among experts.
The first known case appeared in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. It is believed that the virus was transmitted to humans from animals sold in urban markets.
In May of this year, US President Joe Biden ordered his assistants to find answers to questions about origins, saying that US intelligence agencies are seeking competitive theories that may include the possibility of a Chinese laboratory accident.
In a press conference, he worked with other officials and Chinese experts to urge the WHO to expand the traceability work to other countries outside of China.
“We believe that the possibility of laboratory leakage is extremely small, and there is no need to invest more energy and effort in this area,” said Liang Wannian, the Chinese leader of the WHO Joint Expert Group. He said that more animal research should be done, especially in countries with bat populations.
However, Liang said that the laboratory leakage hypothesis cannot be completely discounted, but suggested that if the evidence is assured, other countries can investigate the possibility of it leaking from their laboratories.
A key part of the laboratory leak theory focused on the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)’s decision to offline its gene sequence and sample database in 2019.
When asked about this decision, WIV professor and director of the National Biosafety Laboratory Yuan Zhiming told reporters that due to concerns about cyber attacks, these databases are currently only shared internally.
