US continues to ignore questions on COVID origins: Global Times

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Global Times
6 Mar 00:17

Evidence that points out the US have clearly been politicizing the Covid-19 issue lies in the fact that it allowed an intelligence agency to take care of the matter.

Security personnel keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the visit by the World Health Organization (WHO) team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Wuhan, Hubei province, China February 3, 2021 REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo)

A report published by the Global Times on Sunday disclosed frustrations among World Health Organization (WHO) senior experts due to the US' reluctance to disclose more information on the origins of the Coronavirus.

"If any country has information about the origins of the pandemic, it is essential for that information to be shared with the WHO and the international scientific community," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday.

On the same day, Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's COVID-19 technical lead, tweeted the following:

As you know, our powers are limited and WHO cannot compel countries. But we persistently engage and push. We @WHO welcome the US’s support in seeking the origins of the #COVID19 pandemic and in preventing future pandemics.

What you are doing does not help us achieve this.
— Maria Van Kerkhove (@mvankerkhove) March 2, 2023

A senior expert from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) who requested anonymity told the Global Times, "The origins tracing should be purely a matter of science, but since the beginning, the issue has been mingled with politics. Driven by political interests, we've seen the US － from the accusations made by the FBI to the US Department of Energy － has never stopped politicizing the issue."

Another source based in Beijing who specializes in US studies told the Global Times on condition of anonymity on Sunday, "On the issue of origins tracing, the US opted to pretend to be deaf in hearing fact-based responses from other countries, and it only wishes to investigate countries that the US suspects, but aren't allowing the international community to investigate itself for being a suspect on this matter."

The expert added that the way in which the US deals with origin-tracing issues is the same as its way of approaching diplomatic issues - always holding a hegemonic mentality along with double standards.

Evidence that points out the US have clearly been politicizing the Covid-19 issue lies in the fact that it allowed an intelligence agency to take care of the matter, they added.

On Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said "Given the US intelligence community's track record of making up stories, there is little, if any, credibility in their conclusions. The US will not succeed in discrediting China by rehashing the 'lab leak' theory, but will only hurt the US' own reputation."

The US has been dodging serious questions regarding Fort Detrick and its military biological labs spread across the world. Instead, it has misled the public by constantly employing a threatening voice to assert its dominance, experts argue.

On Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the agency is convinced that the Coronavirus has most likely originated from a Chinese-controlled lab in Wuhan.

On February 26, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US Energy Department had concluded that "the COVID pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak."

The report was however labeled as being made with "low confidence," sources say.

On Friday, Tedros said that "the continued politicization of the origins' research has turned what should be a purely scientific process into a geopolitical football, which only makes the task of identifying the origins more difficult, and that makes the world less safe."

A Chinese member of the WHO-China joint team told the Global Times on Sunday that as long as tracing the origins of COVID-19 remain politicized, the investigation will continue to be challenging scientists, virologists and health experts around the world who strive to identify the origins so as to prevent another deadly outbreak.