Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

China hopes that the World Health Organization (WHO) Secretariat will take a science-based, objective and just position to end the politicization of COVID-19 origins tracing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at Monday's press briefing in response to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus' claim that the continued politicization of the origins research only makes the task of identifying the sources more difficult.

China once again urges the US to immediately stop political manipulation of COVID-19 origins tracing, and respond to the legitimate concerns of the international community as soon as possible, Mao said. 

The US should take the initiative to share with the WHO the data of suspected cases in the early stages in the US and release the relevant information of the Fort Detrick lab and other bio-laboratories around the world, Mao noted.

Tedros has noted that the WHO continues to call for China to be transparent in sharing data. In response to the claim, Mao said on Monday that China has always actively supported and participated in global scientific origins tracing, and China firmly opposes any form of political manipulation.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, China has received international experts from the WHO twice for cooperation in origins tracing, which produced authoritative joint research reports, laying a solid foundation for origins tracing globally, Mao said.

Following the establishment of the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the origins of novel pathogens, China nominated experts to participate in the advisory group, and also organized experts to share the research findings with the WHO Secretariat and the advisory group many times, according to Mao.

"China has shared the most data and research results on the COVID-19 origins tracing, and contributed the most on origins tracing research globally," Mao said.

It is science on COVID-19 origins tracing that should be studied in collaboration with scientists around the world. For some time, the US has insisted on politicizing, weaponizing, and instrumentalizing the origins tracing. Without any evidence, the US has hyped fallacies such as "biological weapons theory" and "lab leak theory," seriously poisoning the global atmosphere of scientific origins tracing, according to Mao.

Finding the virus origins is a shared responsibility of countries around the world, Mao noted. 

China proposed the suggestion to carry out the origins tracing research in multiple countries and regions around the world. However, the US ignored these scientific conclusions and recommendations, and blindly put pressure on the WHO and repeatedly asked it to do origins-tracing in China, Mao said.

The US has never invited the WHO to send experts to the US to do origins tracing, and it never provided the data on the early stage, said Mao, noting that politicizing the origins tracing issue will only hinder global cooperation on scientific origins tracing, split global solidarity and undermine the global health governance mechanism.

Global Times