Politicising COVID-19 origins hampers investigations: Chinese embassy in US
Politicising the origins of COVID-19 will hamper investigations, said China’s embassy in the United States on Thursday. The development comes after US President Joe Biden ordered a review of intelligence about where the virus emerged.
China supports “a comprehensive study of all early cases of COVID-19 found worldwide and a thorough investigation into some secretive bases and biological laboratories all over the world,” the embassy said in remarks attributed to a spokesperson, posted on its website.
Earlier in the day, President Joe Biden ordered aides to find answers to the origin of the virus that causes COVID-19, saying on Wednesday that US intelligence agencies are pursuing rival theories potentially including the possibility of a laboratory accident in China.
Intelligence agencies are considering two likely scenarios but still lack strong confidence in their conclusions and are hotly debating which is more probable, Biden said.
The conclusions were detailed in a report to Biden, who asked his team in March to detail whether the novel coronavirus “emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident,” according to the president’s written statement.