Beijing | China appeared embarrassed on Wednesday after the words of the boss of the World Health Organization (WHO), who asked to continue the investigation into the theory that COVID-19 could have escaped from a Chinese laboratory.
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Asked during a press briefing, Liang Wannian, head of the delegation of Chinese scientists who collaborated on the report of experts appointed by the WHO on the origin of the coronavirus, expressed his incomprehension of the words scored by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“I do not understand his vision of things because it is an area that concerns us scientists,” he said.
He also did not comment on the request of the head of the WHO to send a new fact-finding mission on the spot, simply assuring that the Chinese researchers would continue to collaborate with their foreign colleagues.
The WHO boss, accused of being too complacent towards Beijing, surprised Tuesday by asking for additional investigations into the theory that the coronavirus could have escaped from the virology laboratory in Wuhan, the city of central China where COVID-19 appeared at the end of 2019.
In their report released this week, international experts dispatched to Wuhan by the WHO in January virtually ruled it out, deeming “extremely unlikely” that the virus came from a laboratory.
Asked at another press briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying repeated this part of the report. She also called on the scientific community to investigate in other parts of the world, not just China.
The thesis of the leak of the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been strongly defended by the US administration under President Donald Trump, based on information from its intelligence services. China has always denied this possibility.