China: Probe US labs for virus origins
Print Edition
A SENIOR Chinese diplomat said on Tuesday that the labs of Fort Detrick and the University of North Carolina in the United States should be subject to “transparent investigation with full access” for the origins tracing of COVID-19.
Ambassador Chen Xu, permanent representative of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva, said in his letter to World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the hypothesis of the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — into the human population was caused by lab leak in the Wuhan Institute of Virology is “extremely unlikely.”
This is the definite conclusion made in the WHO-convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part, Joint WHO-China Study Team Report, he said.
If some parties are of the view that the “lab leak” hypothesis remains open, it is the labs of Fort Detrick and the University of North Carolina in the US that should be subject to transparent investigation with full access, Chen added.
The criticism came ahead of the release of a US intelligence report on the origins of the coronavirus.
Fu Cong, director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ arms control department, told journalists in Beijing yesterday that “scapegoating China cannot whitewash the US.”
“If (the US) wants to baselessly accuse China, they better be prepared to accept a counter-attack from China,” Fu said.
“If the US thinks China is guilty, they need to come up with evidence to prove that China is guilty. You don’t blame a victim for not providing information to incriminate himself.”
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said that China has always supported and will continue to participate in the scientific origins tracing.
China has twice invited the WHO for joint research, which produced scientific and authoritative conclusions that a lab leakage was “extremely unlikely,” he stressed, adding that in fact, the international community and the US public have serious concerns that the activities related to the Fort Detrick base are not legal, transparent or safe.
He said that Fort Detrick’s infectious disease institute has studied coronaviruses and that it was closed for several months in 2019-20 for safety violations.
“The US has been accusing the Wuhan Institute of Virology of introducing COVID-19 with its coronavirus studies. However, the US is the biggest sponsor and practitioner of such kind of researches in the world,” Wang continued.
“The team of Ralph S Baric at the University of North Carolina, particularly, is the authority of such kind of research with extremely mature capability in synergizing and modifying coronavirus. A probe into Baric’s team and the lab would clarify whether coronavirus research has created or will create SARS-CoV-2,” he said.
Wang urged the US to stop political manipulation of the origins-tracing issue.
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