Politicising Covid-19 undermine global efforts to curb the pandemic

WHO prepares a second phase of studying the origins of COVID-19, and China has been under pressure to investigators more access amid allegations that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a research laboratory in the city of Wuhan.

Biden said on Wednesday that US intelligence agencies were divided about whether COVID-19 “emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident”.

“We are hearing about people who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology becoming sick with an illness, we know that this has been spreading since November (2019) and we have seen the Chinese government be very reticent to allow the press to investigate the origins of this virus said, Dr. Amesh Adalja, an expert in biosecurity and emerging infectious diseases.

Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health with the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC, said China’s lack of openness was a key factor behind the resurgence of the lab leak theory.

The Chinese embassy said it supports “a comprehensive study of all early cases of COVID-19 found worldwide and a thorough investigation into some secretive bases and biological laboratories all over the world.”

The Global Times, part of the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper group, said late on Wednesday that if the “lab leak theory” was to be further investigated, the US should also allow investigators into its own facilities, including the lab at Fort Detrick.

A joint China-WHO study published in March said that it was highly improbable that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the lab, adding that it most likely spread from bats to humans via an as yet unidentified intermediary species.