China on Tuesday pushed back at renewed suggestions that the COVID-19 pandemic could have been the result of a lab leak, saying it has been “open and transparent” in the search for the virus’ origins.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Energy assessed with “low confidence” that the pandemic that was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 began with the leak of a virus from a lab. The report hasn’t been made public and officials in Washington stressed that U.S. agencies are not in agreement on the origin.
China has “shared the most data and research results on virus tracing and made important contributions to global virus tracing research,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning Mao told reporters Tuesday at a daily briefing.
U.S. officials and members of Congress have accused China of not been entirely cooperative with inquiries into the origin.
A World Health Organization expert group said last year that “key pieces of data” to explain how the pandemic began were still missing. The scientists cited avenues of research that were needed, including studies evaluating the role of wild animals and environmental studies in places where the virus might have first spread.
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