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Coronavirus pandemic
ChinaDiplomacy

China backs WHO investigating origin of Covid-19, hits out at US ‘politicising issue’

  • Global health body says it is talking to Beijing about another mission to the country to look into potential animal source of outbreak
  • Foreign ministry accuses Washington of ‘untruthful and insincere remarks’ and rejects inquiry with ‘presumption of guilt’

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Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China would support a review of the pandemic “at an appropriate time”. Photo: Kyodo
Phoebe Zhang
China says it supports World Health Organisation efforts to investigate the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, but rejects any “presumption of guilt”, after the global body said it was talking to Beijing about sending another delegation to the country.
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The remarks came as Beijing is under mounting international pressure – particularly from the United States – to allow an inquiry into how the pandemic started, and if it was linked to a laboratory in Wuhan, the city where the new virus strain was first reported.

Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist with the WHO, on Wednesday said the agency was in discussion with China about examining potential animal origins of the coronavirus.

“There is discussion with our counterparts in China for a further mission, which would be more academic in focus and really focus on looking at what happened at the beginning in terms of the exposures with different animals, so that we can look to have an approach to find the zoonotic source,” she said.

“The public health importance of this is critical because without knowing where the animal origin is, it’s difficult for us to attempt to prevent this from happening again,” she added.

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US President Donald Trump has suggested the virus may be the result of an accident at a Chinese lab, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the US had evidence of this. Trump has also been critical of the WHO, calling it “China-centric” and halting funding to the body. He described the pandemic as an “attack” worse than Pearl Harbour and September 11 that “could have been stopped in China”.
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