Beijing: China has played down new suggestions that the Covid-19 pandemic may have been the result of a laboratory leak, saying it has been “open and transparent” in its search for the virus’ origins. Most recently, the US Department of Energy assessed with “low confidence” that the pandemic first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 began with a “virus leak from a laboratory”.
The report has not been made public and officials in Washington insist that US agencies do not agree on the origin. “China has shared the most data and research results on virus tracing and made important contributions to global virus tracing research,” foreign ministry spokesman Mao Ning Mao told reporters at a daily briefing on Tuesday.
US officials and members of Congress have accused China of not fully cooperating with the origin investigation. A World Health Organization expert group said last year that “key pieces of data” to explain how the pandemic began are still missing. The scientists cited research that was needed, including studies evaluating the role of wild animals and environmental studies in places where the virus may have first spread.
The Associated Press previously reported that the Chinese government was tightly controlling research into the origins of the pandemic, barring some work and promoting fringe theories that it could have come from outside the country.
Mao said, “Politicizing the issue of virus tracing will not only tarnish China, but will only damage America’s own credibility.” His comments came amid persistent questions about how the virus that has killed more than 6.8 million people worldwide first emerged.
The US Department of Energy’s findings were first reported over the weekend in The Wall Street Journal, which said the classified report was based on new intelligence and was noted in an update to the 2021 document. DOE oversees a national network of laboratories in the US.
White House officials on Monday declined to confirm press reports about the assessment. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Monday that “there just isn’t an intelligence community consensus” on the origin.
In 2021, officials released an intelligence report summary saying that four members of the US intelligence community believe with low confidence that the virus was first transmitted from an animal to a human, and a fifth believed with moderate confidence that The first human infection was linked to it. a laboratory.
Some scientists are open to the lab-leak theory, but many scientists believe the virus came from animals, mutated, and jumped into people, as has happened with viruses in the past. Experts say the true origins of the pandemic may not be known for many years, if ever.