China rejects COVID-19 origins report by US, terms it 'political, fake'
Aug 28, 2021
Beijing [China], August 28 : Refuting results of a US report tracing the origins of the Covid-19 virus, Beijing has lodged solemn representations with Washington terming the report as "completely political, and having no scientificity and credibility."
"China has lodged solemn representations with the US over a so-called virus origins tracing report by the US intelligence community that is completely political, fake, having no scientificity and credibility," said Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, as quoted by Global Times.
In a strongly-worded statement, Ma said the US should "stop poisoning" the international cooperation on virus tracing and return to the correct path of scientific origins tracing and cooperation in the fight against the pandemic.
Beijing's reaction follows the declassified summary of a report commissioned by US President Joe Biden revealed on Friday which said that the US Intelligence Community (IC) assesses that the origins of the novel coronavirus disease may never be definitively identified without additional information.
According to the report, the US intelligence community is still divided about which of the two theories -- that the virus came from a lab leak or that it jumped from animal to human, naturally. There is consensus among the intelligence agencies that the two prevailing theories are plausible, the report said.
A WHO-led team of scientists that travelled to China in early 2021 to investigate the origins of the virus struggled to get a clear picture of what research China was conducting beforehand, faced constraints during its visit, and had little power to conduct thorough and impartial research.
Back in May, Biden issued a directive to the 17 main US intelligence agencies, which make up the IC, to deliver a report on the origins of coronavirus within 90 days.
"The IC judges said they will be unable to provide a more definitive explanation for the origin of COVID-19 unless new information allows them to determine the specific pathway for initial natural contact with an animal or to determine that a laboratory in Wuhan was handling SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor virus before COVID-19 emerged," the IC concluded.
