WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus delivering remarks following the speech of US President's chief medical adviser during a World Health Organization (WHO) executive board meeting on January 21, 2021 in Geneva. Photo: VCG

China's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday urged the WHO to play a leading role in respecting science after WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus earlier commented that further investigation is needed on the hypothesis of a "lab leak" being the origin of the COVID-19. The theory has already been determined by the WHO-China joint expert team as being extremely unlikely.

A separate report published on Tuesday in a newspaper in Central China's Hubei Province, the Hubei Daily, wrote that an anonymous Chinese expert on the WHO-China joint team on the virus origins tracing was "surprised and unsatisfied" by Tedros' comment. The expert called Tedros' comment "irresponsible."

The expert told the Hubei Daily that he was unclear how the head of the WHO read and interpreted the report, which was done on the basis of a large number of scientific facts and of the consensus reached by Chinese and foreign scientists. 

From the beginning, the lab leak theory was a baseless argument, which has been the consensus for global scientists, the expert told the paper. 

"Some forces with ulterior motives are challenging the authority of and science behind the joint report, based on Tedros' comment. Experts on the joint team are worried and unsatisfied. If the global virus origins tracing work is in stalemate, the WHO should bear the responsibility," the expert told the Hubei Daily.

Another expert from the team, who preferred not to be identified, told the Global Times in a previous exclusive interview that the Chinese experts had noticed palpable "political pressure" on the international experts of the team. 

Wang Wenbin, a spokersperson of the Chinese foreign ministry, emphasized during a routine press conference on Wednesday that the report was co-authored by more than 30 top-notch scientists worldwide, so it is widely representative and enjoys a high degree of professionalism.

The joint experts team did its research and filed the report independently, and it followed WHO procedures. The team adopted scientific methodology, and it filed an authoritative and scientific report, he said. 

There are only two types of speculation regarding the lab theory: one is a man-made virus and the other is a lab leak. The man-made possibility has already been refuted by global scientists, while the pretext for a lab leak theory would be that the lab could preserve the virus, the Chinese expert was quoted as saying in the media report. 

The joint team visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the Hubei provincial and Wuhan municipal CDCs, gained a detailed understanding of laboratory management and operating procedures, held discussions with relevant experts, and tested the relevant laboratory staffers' serum antibodies, which all turned out to be negative.

The WHO head also expressed concerns over access to data, which was also rebuked by the Chinese expert quoted in the newspaper. The claims about difficulties in accessing raw data are completely unfounded, as Chinese and foreign experts had always studied and analyzed the data together, and there's no difference between the information obtained by the Chinese experts and that obtained by their foreign counterparts. 

As for the "withholding data" accusation made by a statement from Western governments, Liang Wannian, team leader of the Chinese side of the WHO-China joint expert team, said at a press conference in March that there's no such thing as perfect data. China has done what it could to collect the data and worked together with foreign experts. 

Liang also told the Global Times in a previous interview that after the field studies, the joint team agreed that there will be no future virus origins-tracing mission in the lab leak area, as the hypothesis is extremely unlikely, unless there's new evidence. 

Global Times