Chinese Foreign Ministry urges the United States not to politicize the issue of the origin of COVID-19

The US should respect science and facts and stop politicizing the origin of COVID-19. Thus, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning commented on the words of FBI Director Christopher Ray about the virus leak from a laboratory in Wuhan.

“China strongly opposes any form of political manipulation under the pretext of finding the source of the coronavirus,” she said (quote according to TASS).

Earlier today, FBI Director Christopher Wray declaredthat the most likely cause of the coronavirus pandemic is a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan. Ray did not share the details of this version. The US Department of Energy is also inclined to the laboratory origin of COVID-19, informed The Wall Street Journal February 26. At the same time, the agency notes a “low degree of certainty” in this version.

Commenting on the words of the FBI Director, the head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova said that it was impossible to confirm the fact of the leak. She stressed that the institutes in Wuhan did not study “anything forbidden”.

The coronavirus pandemic began at the end of 2019 in the Chinese province of Wuhan. According to Johns Hopkins University, during the pandemic, the virus was detected in more than 675.3 million people on the planet. Of these, almost 6.9 million died as a result of infection.

In March 2021, WHO published a report on the emergence of COVID-19. The most likely cause of the pandemic, the authors considered the transmission of coronavirus to humans from bats through an intermediary animal. The version of the virus leaking from the laboratory in Wuhan was considered “extremely unlikely” by the WHO. The WHO investigation is still ongoing. In February 2023, the organization said that they were still waiting for data from the Chinese side necessary to conduct research on the origin of the coronavirus and advance the investigation.

In September 2022, the Lancet Coronavirus Commission released its final report on COVID-19. In it, scientists still assumed the possibility of a laboratory origin of the coronavirus and its subsequent leakage.