US envoy accuses China of 'stonewalling' world on COVID origins since Jan 2020

During his confirmation hearing to become the next US ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns on Wednesday, 20 October, said that Bejing has been “stonewalling” the world on the origins of COVID-19 since January 2020. While the world is in the second year of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, the origins of the disease still remains a mystery. Scientists have offered various theories including one which suggests that the virus appeared due to a leak at a Chinese laboratory. 

On Wednesday, Burns, however, stressed that he neither supports the theory that the disease was the result of a natural spillover nor the theory that the virus could have emerged as the result of a lab leak. But, the US envoy also added that Washington needs to push China to “come clean about what happened”. “We need to investigate,” Burns told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 

“On the coronavirus, the problem here is with China. The Chinese government withheld information very clearly from their own people and the rest of the world for about a month in late December and January of 2020. I have consistently criticized the Chinese government for that, and they deserve to be criticized,” Burns said. 

He added, “They’ve (China) been stonewalling all of us around the world since January of 2020, including this week when they refused to act to work with the World Health Organization’s new investigative body to answer the question that you rightfully asked.” 

‘Last chance' to figure out COVID origins 

It is to mention that last week the WHO announced a new COVID-19 origins team, including six people who were part of the widely criticised first team that deemed the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis “extremely unlikely” earlier this year. The UN health agency said that its newly formed advisory panel on dangerous infections could be the "last chance" to figure out the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and encouraged China to provide data from early cases. WHO unveiled 26 members of its Scientific Advisory Group on the Origins of Novel Pathogens. 

Meanwhile, China has repeatedly denied that the virus escaped from one of its laboratories and has stated that no further inspections are required. A WHO-led team spent four weeks in and around Wuhan Lab and the city earlier this year, along with Chinese experts. The study concluded in a joint report in March that the virus was most likely transmitted from bats to humans via another animal.

(Image: AP/Pixabay)