JAKARTA - China has rejected the World Health Organization's (WHO) proposal regarding a phase two investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, which includes the hypothesis that the virus could have escaped from a Chinese laboratory, a top Chinese health official said Thursday, July 22.
The refusal comes after the WHO last week proposed a second phase study of the origins of the coronavirus in China, including an audit of laboratories and markets in the city of Wuhan, calling for transparency from the authorities.
"We will not accept such a traceability plan that, in some aspects, ignores common sense and defies science", said Zeng Yixin, deputy minister of China's National Health Commission (NHC), cited from Reuters.
Zeng said he was surprised when he first read the WHO's plan because it hypothesized that breaches of Chinese laboratory protocols had caused the virus to leak during the study.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus previously said investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in China were hampered by a lack of raw data in the first days of the outbreak there.
"We ask China to be transparent and open and cooperate. We owe it to the millions of people who suffered and the millions who died to know what happened", Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference last Thursday.
In response, Zeng reiterated China's position that some data cannot be fully shared due to privacy concerns.
"We hope that WHO seriously reviews the considerations and suggestions made by Chinese experts, truly treats tracing the origins of COVID-19 as a scientific matter, removing political interference", Zeng said.
"We (China) are against the politicization of this research", said Zheng. The origin of the virus is still debated among experts.
At a regular press briefing on Friday last week, when asked about Tedros' comments, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said some data could not be copied or left China because it involved personal information.
The first known case emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. The virus is believed to have passed to humans from animals sold for food at the city market.
In May, US President Joe Biden ordered his aides to find answers to questions about origins saying US intelligence agencies were pursuing rival theories that could potentially include a possible laboratory crash in China.
Zeng, along with other officials and China experts at a press conference, urged the WHO to expand its efforts to trace origins outside China to other countries.
"We believe a laboratory leak is highly unlikely and there is no need to invest more energy and effort in this", said Liang Wannian, the China team leader on the WHO's joint expert team.
"More animal studies should be done, particularly in countries with bat populations".
However, Liang said the laboratory leak hypothesis cannot be completely dismissed. But, he suggested if evidence was needed, other countries could look into possible leaks from their labs.
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An important part of the laboratory leak theory centers on the decision of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to deactivate its gene sequence and sample database in 2019.
When asked about the decision, Yuan Zhiming, professor at WIV and director of the National Biosafety Laboratory, told reporters at this time the database was only shared internally due to cyber-attack concerns.
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