China says US COVID origins report lacks credibility

pharmafile | November 1, 2021 | News story | Sales and Marketing  

A US intelligence report saying it was plausible that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan laboratory has been deemed unscientific and without credibility, says Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin, according to Reuters.

The report determined that both a natural origin and a lab leak are plausible hypotheses to explain how SARS-CoV-2 first emerged.

There is still limited hard-and-fast evidence explaining how people started becoming infected in Wuhan in 2019.

In response to this, Wang said on the website of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “a lie repeated a thousand times is still a lie”, stating that US intelligence services “have a reputation for fraud and deception.” Wang also repeated China’s calls for the US to open its own laboratory at Fort Detrick to international experts.

In February, a WHO team conducted an investigation into the lab leak hypothesis, which China has since strongly refuted. The team deemed the theory “extremely unlikely”, but this was concluded largely in part due to China’s lack of data and transparency.

In October, the WHO established a new Scientific Advisory Group on Pandemic Origins (SAGO), to conduct a new investigation in Wuhan. They called on China to supply the raw data needed for this, but China has declined, citing patient privacy rules. Michael Ryan, WHO’s Emergencies Director, said that the SAGO investigation may be the “last chance to understand the origins of this virus”.

Lina Adams

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