Photo:VCG

China's National Health Commission published on Tuesday the Chinese version of the World Health Organization (WHO) report of the joint study with Chinese experts in Wuhan on the global tracing of COVID-19 origins , following the publication of the English version by the WHO on March 30.

As a part of the global scientific research on the origins of the novel coronavirus, Chinese and WHO experts worked together in Wuhan from January 14 to February 10 this year.

The report, generated after WHO experts visited Wuhan, the Chinese city first reporting a COVID-19 case, dismissed the "lab-leak" conspiracy theory, and recommended transmissions between animals and humans, and transmissions through frozen food, which is consistent with what WHO experts said in a February conference in Wuhan. 

According to the report, the data suggest that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, where large clusters of infections were recorded, was not the original source of the outbreak.

Although the report said a laboratory incident as the origin of the virus was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway, Western politicians and media have again been pursuing this theory as the origin of COVID-19.

The Wall Street Journal published a story on May 23 titled "Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on COVID-19 Origin," citing an unpublished report that was issued during the final days of the former Trump administration, which said that several researchers at the lab became sick in the autumn of 2019 with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. 

The alleged US intelligence report on sick staff at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is an outright lie that came from nowhere, Yuan Zhiming, Director of the institute's Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, told the Global Times previously.

If WHO scientists cannot find the answer in China regarding the origins of the coronavirus, maybe it's time for them to dig somewhere else and test more hypotheses to solve the mystery, Chinese scientists from the WHO-China virus tracing team suggested previously.