Ajit Karn
Beijing: China on Monday rejected a new US report claiming that the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from a bio facility in Wuhan, stating that tracing the pandemic’s origins “is a matter of science and should not be politicised.”
The spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning, stated that international specialists have deemed it “extremely implausible” that the pandemic originated in a Chinese laboratory.
She stated that it is a scientifically-based, authoritative conclusion arrived by the experts of the WHO-China joint mission following visits to the Wuhan laboratory and in-depth discussions with researchers.
Mao’s remarks were in response to the most recent assessment by the US Department of Energy (USDE) that the coronavirus most likely escaped from a bio laboratory in Wuhan.
“It was precisely documented in the mission’s report and received widespread international recognition,” she said.
“Tracing the origins of SARS-CoV-2 is a scientific endeavour that should not be politicised. China has always supported and participated in global origins research based on science “Mao said.
According to reports on Sunday that the USDE concluded in its intelligence report that it had “low confidence” that the Covid-19 virus inadvertently escaped from a facility in Wuhan.
According to the definition, a low confidence assessment indicates that the information obtained is insufficiently reliable or too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgement, or that there is insufficient information available to draw a more robust conclusion.
The epicentre of the contagion was the Huanan market in Wuhan, China’s central metropolis. In late 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus swiftly spread from its point of origin in Wuhan to the rest of the globe, killing nearly seven million people.
A WHO team of experts who visited Wuhan in 2021 during the raging controversy surrounding the lab-leak theory, which China vehemently denied, stated in their report that the Wuhan bio lab breach was the “least probable hypothesis.”
However, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that the Wuhan lab breach allegation required further investigation.
Ghebreyesus stated, “As far as the WHO is concerned, all hypotheses remain on the menu.”
Over two years after the initial detection of Covid-19 in Wuhan, the origin of the virus remains an enigma.
It is suspected that the coronavirus escaped, inadvertently or otherwise, from a laboratory in Wuhan, central China, where it was first identified.
Over a decade has passed since the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) began researching coronaviruses in bats.
The USDE assessment adds to the divisions within the US government regarding whether the Covid-19 pandemic began in China in 2019 as a result of a lab breach or naturally.
Intelligence agencies have been divided on this issue for years.
According to reports that in 2021, the intelligence community declassified a report indicating that four agencies assessed with low confidence that the virus likely jumped from animals to humans in the wild, while one agency assessed with moderate confidence that the pandemic was caused by a laboratory accident.
In a statement to News Agencies, a USDE spokesperson said, “The Department of Energy continues to support the thorough, meticulous, and objective work of our intelligence professionals as they investigate the origins of COVID-19 as directed by the President.”
The Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence of the Department of Energy is one of the 18 government agencies that comprise the intelligence community, which is overseen by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The Director of National Intelligence’s Office declined to comment.
The controversial lab-leak theory emerged early in the pandemic and was promoted by the then-president of the United States, Donald Trump.
Also read: “COVID-19 Likely Originated in Chinese Laboratory”: Nikki Haley
China has refuted the claim that the virus may have escaped from a laboratory, labelling it a fabrication, and has suggested that the coronavirus may have entered the country through foreign food imports.
Given the devastating human toll of the pandemic, the majority of scientists agree that comprehending the origin of the virus is essential to preventing it from occurring again.
