Tue 05 May 2020:
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said on Sunday that the US had “enormous evidence” to back the theory. But the administration had not produced it publicly or provided it to the WHO, said its emergencies director, Dr Michael Ryan. “So from our perspective, this remains speculative.
Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed to have proof the virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan – whereas scientists believe it jumped from animals to humans at a wet market in the city last year.
“Like any evidence-based organisation, we would be very willing to receive any information that purports to the origin of the virus,” Ryan said, stressing that this was “a very important piece of public health information for future control”.
“If that data and evidence is available, then it will be for the United States government to decide whether and when it can be shared, but it is difficult for the WHO to operate in an information vacuum in that regard.”
Ryan said it was important for the WHO to learn from Chinese scientists’ data and exchange knowledge to “find the answers together”, but cautioned against politicising the issue. “If this is projected as aggressive investigation of wrongdoing, that is much more difficult to deal with. That’s a political issue,” he said.
Chinese state media attacked the US claims, with the state broadcaster CCTV labelling them “insane and evasive” in a Monday opinion piece entitled “Evil Pompeo is wantonly spewing poison and spreading lies”. The state-backed Global Times also published an editorial accusing Pompeo and Trump of “bluffing”, and said if the US had evidence it should present it.
Don’t just say there’s enormous evidence, Pompeo should present them to the world. Republican government is putting on a show. By demanding to investigate Wuhan lab, they are trying to create continuous controversy and focus, to fool the American public. pic.twitter.com/YJcKaLqsg9
— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) May 3, 2020
“If Washington has solid evidence, then it should let research institutes and scientists examine and verify it,” the editorial said. The Global Times’ editor, Hu Xijin, tweeted that demands to investigate the Wuhan lab were an attempt to “fool the American people”.
While coronaviruses generally originate in bats, both Van Kerkhove and Ryan stressed the importance of discovering how the virus that causes Covid-19 crossed over to humans, and what animal served as an “intermediary host” along the way.
Several nations, including Australia and the UK, have called for an independent investigation into the outbreak, angering China.
Citing an internal Chinese government report on Tuesday, the Reuters news agency reported international anti-China sentiment was at its highest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
According to the report, which Reuters said was presented in early March to top Beijing leaders including the president, Xi Jinping, the global hostility could tip US-China relations into confrontation once the pandemic was over.
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