China acknowledged Friday that it had ordered non-governmental laboratories to destroy samples of the emerging corona virus during early stages of the outbreak.

Hong Kong newspaper "South China Morning" quoted Liu Dengfeng, an official with the National Health Commission, as saying that the measure was taken "to ward off the danger to laboratory biological safety and prevent secondary disasters caused by unspecified pathogens."

"When the pneumonia-like epidemic was first reported in Wuhan, institutes at the national level were working to determine the causative agent of the disease," Liu added.

He continued, "based on a comprehensive research and expert opinion, we decided at the time to classify the epidemic within the second category of severe diseases, and to impose biological safety requirements on the collection of samples, transportation and experimental activities, in addition to the destruction of samples."

Tensions between Washington and Beijing have escalated recently against the backdrop of the spread of the Corona pandemic, which has caused the death of more than 300,000 people around the world, as China is under increasing international pressure to allow an investigation into its handling of the epidemic.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly stressed that Beijing refused to provide virus samples taken from patients when the infection began in China late last year, and that the Chinese authorities destroyed samples obtained early.

According to a note issued in February by the China Regional Health Committee, those dealing with virus samples were asked not to submit them to any institutions or laboratories without approval.

He also asked non-governmental laboratories, which obtained samples in the early stages of the outbreak, to destroy or send them to a government center for disease control and prevention, according to the memo.

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