China has attacked the theory that the coronavirus pandemic may have originated as a leak from a Chinese laboratory as a politically motivated lie.
The response came after the World Health Organization recommended in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe is needed into whether a lab accident may be to blame.
A Foreign Ministry spokesperson also rejected accusations that China had not been fully cooperative with investigators, saying it welcomed a science-based probe but rejected any political manipulation.
The spokesperson also reiterated calls for an investigation into “highly suspicious laboratories such as Fort Detrick and the University of North Carolina” where China has suggested, without evidence, that the U.S. was developing the coronavirus as a bioweapon.
The WHO’s recommendation marks a sharp reversal of the U.N. health agency’s initial assessment of the pandemic’s origins.
It also comes more than two years after coronavirus emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan and after at least 6.3 million deaths have been counted from the pandemic worldwide.
The WHO concluded last year that it was “extremely unlikely” COVID-19 might have spilled into humans from a lab. But in a report released Thursday, the agency’s expert group says “key pieces of data” to help scientists understand how the pandemic began are still missing.
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