Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs

China urges the US to immediately stop politicizing and weaponizing the tracing of the origins of COVID-19, and to stop scapegoating others, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Monday in response to the US' declassification of information related to the tracing of the origins.

The US intelligence community has found no direct evidence of a "biosafety incident" or of the pre-pandemic presence of the virus that causes COVID-19 at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, but did not make an assessment of the likelihood the outbreak began there, according to a report released Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), CBS News reported. 

China believes in the need to respect science and facts, Mao said. "We have actively supported and participated in global science-based origins-tracing. We firmly oppose all forms of political manipulation." 

To date, China remains the only country that has invited more than once WHO expert groups to conduct joint COVID-19 origins study inside the country, Mao said. "A laboratory origin of the pandemic was considered to be extremely unlikely" is a science-based, authoritative conclusion reached by the experts of the WHO-China joint mission following their field trips to the lab in Wuhan and in-depth communication with researchers, according to Mao. The conclusion is accurately recorded in the mission's report and has been widely acknowledged by the international community and the science community.

The US needs to immediately stop politicizing and weaponizing origins-tracing, stop scapegoating others and keeping mum about the questions waiting for an answer about the US role in the spread of the virus, disclose what's going on at Fort Detrick and US biological labs all over the world, and offer a responsible explanation to the world, she said.

Global Times