US, CHINA TAKE OPPOSING STANDS

WASHINGTON: The United States and China have taken sharply opposing positions over how to trace the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, as Washington calls for a new round of studies to be conducted with independent international experts. On the other hand, Beijing told an annual gathering of the WHO’s decision-making body that it considered the investigation in China to be complete and that the attention should now be focused on other countries, reported The Wall Street Journal.

In March this year, the WHO and China published a joint inquiry on the virus origins, which did not conclusively establish how or when the virus began spreading and did little to address Western concerns that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) bent the investigation to its advantage. The WHO report determined that the possibility the virus came from a lab was “extremely unlikely,” noting there was “no record” any lab had closely related viruses. China refused to give raw data on early Covid-19 cases to the WHO-led team probing the origins of the pandemic. Beijing has been accused of delaying access to international investigators for months after the initial outbreak, virtually guaranteeing that the lab had been deep-cleaned before any forensic analysis could be done.

Andy Slavitt, the White House senior adviser for the Covid-19 response, said that a deeper inquiry into the pandemic’s origins is a critical priority for the US. “We need to get to the bottom of this and we need a completely transparent process from China. We need the WHO to assist in that matter. We don’t feel like we have that now,” he said. However, these efforts are up against a push by China to have the WHO focus the probe into other countries, claiming that the virus may have originated elsewhere. “Given the relationship between China and the US, there’s a negligible chance that the Chinese would capitulate to US requests for a full and independent investigation.,” said Lawrence Gostin, faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, reported The Wall Street Journal. The WHO is expected to restudy the “dominant theory” that the SARS-CoV-2 probably originated and spread across the world from China’s Wuhan lab.