It has been a year since the new coronavirus pneumonia was first identified in Wuhan, China, and the origin of the virus is still inconclusive. The World health Organization announced in mid-December that it would send a team of experts to China in January to investigate the source of the virus.
On the eve of the WHO’s planned trip to China to conduct a source investigation, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently said in an interview with two major Chinese official media outlets that “more and more studies indicate that the outbreak is likely to be a multi-point outbreak in multiple places around the world.”
Wang Yi’s words are seen as setting the tone for the upcoming WHO international investigation into the source of the new coronavirus. Critics fear the investigation will be a whitewash, given China’s influence with the WHO.
China’s foreign ministry website and Xinhua published on Jan. 2 a joint interview with China’s Xinhua News Agency and China Central Radio and Television, in which Wang Yi made the above remarks. Wang Yi did not specify information on which research institutions the above conclusions came from or which scientists were involved in the study. Wang Yi also outlined China’s support for the global fight against the epidemic. None of the above-mentioned websites said the exact date of Wang Yi’s interview.
Earlier, U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger noted that the most “plausible” theory about the origin of the coronavirus is that it “escaped” from a laboratory in China. Even Chinese leaders are now openly admitting that their previous claims that the virus originated in the Wuhan market were false, Boming told attendees at a Zoom video conference last week, the Daily Mail reported Jan. 3.
Boming was one of the first White House officials to signal the origin of the Wuhan pneumonia virus in January 2020. Since the outbreak, he has strongly suspected that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory, and, as the New York Times reported last April, Bomen also ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to look for evidence.
The latest intelligence suggests the virus was leaked from the highly secretive Wuhan Institute of Virus Research, 11 miles from the market, Bomen said. He said, “There is growing evidence that the laboratory may be the most reliable source of the virus.”
He added that Beijing’s refusal to allow journalists to visit the lab only increased suspicion that the lab was the “point of origin” of the outbreak.
Wuhan is the earliest known site of a new coronavirus pneumonia outbreak. It is generally believed that the global pandemic spread from Wuhan. China was highly wary of international calls to send experts to Wuhan to investigate the source of the virus, and for a long time was adamantly opposed to international investigations. China feared that if Wuhan was found to be the source of the new coronavirus it would lead to serious consequences for countries around the world to come after China.
Since last March, China has been “blaming” other countries for the source of the new coronavirus without any investigation. Wang Yi’s comments are believed to be the latest example of Chinese officials pushing the source of the new coronavirus out of the country. The earliest known case of blame dumping was a tweet last March by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who said the U.S. military brought the virus to Wuhan and that the U.S. “owes us an explanation. China also blamed imported cold-chain products from other countries as the source of the virus.
The Associated Press reports that internal Communist Party documents obtained by the AP reveal how the Chinese government, under orders from President Xi Jinping, strictly controlled all research into the origin of the new coronavirus, while vigorously promoting the virus as coming from outside China.
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