Chinese Epidemiologist: Investigation Of The Origins Of COVID-19 Should Be Turned To The United States!

Research illustration. (Unsplash/@nci)

JAKARTA - A senior Chinese epidemiologist said the investigation of the origins of COVID-19 should be shifted to the United States (US), along with the findings of researchers indicating the possibility of COVID-19 in the US in early December 2019.

Zeng Guang, a chief epidemiologist at China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the state-owned tabloid Global Times that attention should be turned to the United States, which is slow to test people in the early stages of the outbreak and is also the home of many biology laboratories.

"Everything related to biological weapons owned by the state must be monitored", Zheng said as quoted by Reuters on Thursday, June 17.

Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said, regarding the results of the study by US researchers on Wednesday, the COVID-19 outbreak may have multiple origins, so other countries should cooperate with the World Health Organization (WHO).

As Reported by VOI earlier, a study published this week by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) showed that at least seven people in five states were infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, weeks before the United States reported its first official case of infection.

Frozen blood samples showed people in five states, Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, and Massachusetts, infected with the coronavirus days or weeks before any cases were officially reported in those states.

However, the findings of this 'All of Us' study do not mean that the coronavirus spread widely in the United States in December 2019 or January 2020, the researchers said in their report.

Meanwhile, the origins of the pandemic have been a source of political tension between China and the US, with much of the focus recently on the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), located in Wuhan where the outbreak was first identified in late 2019.

China has been criticized for its lack of transparency in disclosing data on initial cases as well as the virus studied at WIV.

A joint China-WHO report published in March said COVID-19 most likely originated in the country's wildlife trade, with the virus entering humans from bats via an intermediary species.

However, Beijing has promoted the theory that COVID-19 entered China from abroad via contaminated frozen food. Meanwhile, a number of foreign politicians have also called for further investigation into the possible leak from the laboratory.

Earlier, a report by the US Government's national laboratory concluded it was plausible that the virus had leaked from a Wuhan laboratory, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.

While other studies have raised the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 could be circulating in Europe as early as September, experts say this doesn't mean it didn't originate in China, where many SARS-like coronaviruses have been found in the country's outdoors.