Reigniting the debate over the origin of the COVID-19 virus, China reiterated its claim that the United States caused the pandemic.
In a white paper released by the official Xinhua news agency, China accused the United States of politicising the matter of the origins of COVID-19. The paper also asserted that the virus existed in the US prior to the official determination.
The white paper suggested that the US should respond to the legitimate concerns of the international community instead of continuing to “pretend to be deaf and dumb.” “Substantial evidence suggested that COVID-19 might have emerged in the United States earlier than its officially claimed timeline and earlier than the outbreak in China,” it said.
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China’s response comes after the Trump administration launched a COVID-19 website on April 18 in which it said the coronavirus came from a lab leak in Wuhan. The site also criticised former President Joe Biden, former top US health official Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization for their handling of the pandemic.
In its defence, China said that it had shared relevant information promptly with the WHO and the international community. It also pointed to a joint study between the WHO and China, which concluded that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely.”
In January, the CIA said the pandemic was more likely to have emerged from a lab in China than from nature, after the agency had for years said it could not reach a conclusion on the matter. It said it had “low confidence” in its new assessment and noted that both lab origin and natural origin remain plausible.
The coronavirus pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has led to one of the most significant global health crises in recent history. Since emerging in late 2019, the pandemic has claimed over 7 million lives globally and infected more than 700 million people.
