Let them in’: China’s demand for other nations to follow their Covid ‘example’
Tom Flanagan
Tom Flanagan·News Reporter
Thu, 11 February 2021, 8:48 am·5-min read
China has called on other nations to follow their example and allow for a coronavirus origins investigation in a “cooperative manner”.
On Tuesday evening a team of scientists led by the World Health Organisation (WHO) released their initial findings following a four-week stay in Wuhan, the city where Covid-19 cases first exploded at the beginning of the pandemic.
And while expectedly there were no concrete conclusions from their visit, experts all but dismissed the theory the virus had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Scientists also said part of the investigations now need to focus outside of the city and possibly over the Chinese border, particularly nations, predominantly in South East Asia, where the Huanan Seafood Market sourced its meat and livestock from.
Beijing and Chinese state media have repeatedly pushed the concept the virus emerged outside of China and well before cases began to emerge at the end of 2019 in Wuhan.
A February 3, 2021, photo of a security person moving journalists away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology after a World Health Organisation team arrived for a field visit in Wuhan in China’s Hubei province.
A security guard tries to block the lens of a journalist’s camera outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Source: AP
However their obsessive behaviour over such a theory has drawn the ire of other nations who have accused China of attempting to deflect blame over their handling of the pandemic in its infancy.
Experts have thrown caution to the wind over peddling such a claim, studies saying the virus may have been circulating in Europe months before are inconclusive, while German epidemiologist Alexander Kekule branded such a stance was “pure propaganda” from China.
NSW Health Pathology infectious disease expert Professor Dominic Dwyer, who was on the mission in Wuhan, told Nine News on Wednesday he believed the virus originated in China and there was “very limited” evidence to suggest it didn’t.
China calls on world to be ‘transparent’
Yet on Wednesday evening, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin once again entertained the idea and said it was vital other countries adopt “the same open and transparent attitude as China”.
He singled out the US, a nation which it has peddled baseless claims against, saying its army had brought the virus to Wuhan in 2019.
Yahoo News
