China accuses US of ‘political manipulation’ over Covid-19 origin probe
Washington, May 27 (EFE).- China on Thursday accused the United States of “political manipulation” over the origin tracing of Covid-19 after President Joe Biden announced that American agencies were looking into the possibility of lab leak in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
“Since the outbreak of Covid-19 last year, some political forces have been fixated on political manipulation and blame game,” the Chinese embassy in Washington said in a statement on its website.
The statement said while the pandemic was still causing “great damage” in the world and the international community was expecting greater coordination among countries, “some people are turning to their old playbook.”
The embassy noted that China had been calling for international cooperation on tracing the origin of the virus “on the basis of respecting facts and science.”
“To politicize (the) origin tracing, a matter of science, will not only make it hard to find the origin of the virus, but give free rein to the ‘political virus’ and seriously hamper international cooperation on the pandemic.”
It said Beijing supported a “thorough investigation into some secretive bases and biological laboratories all over the world.”
The embassy did not name the US or Biden in its statement that came hours after the president announced that he ordered the American intelligence community to deliver him a report on the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic within 90 days.
The announcement came after a report by US intelligence agencies found that several researchers at the Wuhan Virology Institute became ill in November 2019 and had to be hospitalized, as reported in an article in The Wall Street Journal earlier this week.
The president said that US intelligence was considering two likely scenarios.
First, the virus comes from human contact with an infected animal, and second, that it was manufactured in a laboratory and was inadvertently released in a lab accident.
“I have asked for areas of further inquiry that may be required, including specific questions for China,” he said.
Biden stressed that the US would keep working with allies to press China to participate in an evidence-based international probe and provide access to all relevant data and evidence. EFE
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