On Thursday (July 22), China categorically denied cooperating with any international investigation into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19.
China categorically denied cooperating in any international investigation into the origin of the Covid-19.
“It is impossible for us to accept such an origin-tracing plan”, said the vice minister of the National Health Commission Zeng Yixin.
The US has been mounting pressure on China to allow a group of WHO scientists to visit China again and investigate the virus's origin.
WHO's scientists and researchers team had visited China in January to investigate the origin of the pandemic. But, the Chinese authorities denied it access to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The visiting team was presented with the conclusions of the Chinese investigation but was denied access to the raw data.
In the G7 Summit in June this year, the member states demanded that China cooperate with an international investigation to trace the virus's origin.
The US President Joe Biden had asked his intelligence team to investigate the virus's origin and submit the report by August.
More and more evidence has emerged that the virus may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
As recently as last week, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that China should allow an investigation and added the earlier debunking of ‘lab leak theory’ was “premature”.
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