By Nneka Nwogwugwu
China has rejected a proposal from the World Health Organization (WHO) to allow expert team to return to Wuhan to investigate the origins of COVID-19.
China warned that researchers should make a priority of the “very likely” possibility that the virus originated in animals and expand their work to other countries around the world.
Speaking at a news conference on Thursday at the State Information Council, Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of China’s National Health Commission, said he was “surprised” that the WHO had proposed the team return to places in the central city of Wuhan that they visited earlier this year and also investigate the hypothesis that it leaked from a lab.
Zeng said such a move was “not scientific”.
Recall that in a closed-door meeting last week, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus proposed the second stage of the agency’s investigation into the origins of coronavirus should include further studies in China as well as laboratory “audits”.
“Finding the origins of this virus is a scientific exercise that must be kept free from politics,” Ghebreyesus said. “For that to happen, we expect China to support this next phase of the scientific process by sharing all relevant data in a spirit of transparency.”
The WHO has been under growing pressure to step up its investigation into the origin of the virus, which first emerged in Wuhan and has now killed more than 4.1 million people around the world.
