Beijing (AFP)
China on Thursday rejected the WHO's proposal to continue the investigation into the origin of the pandemic in the Asian country, where the world's first patients with Covid were identified at the end of 2019.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last week called for an audit of laboratories in areas where the first cases of coronavirus were identified - a reference to the Chinese city of Wuhan, a while back the epicenter of the epidemic.
Chinese Vice Minister of Health Zeng Yixin said Thursday he was "extremely surprised" by the proposal.
It is a "disrespect for common sense and arrogance towards science," Zeng said at a press conference.
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China disclosed to the WHO on December 31, 2019 the existence of an outbreak of pneumonia cases in Wuhan.
But Beijing has always fiercely fought the theory that Covid-19 could have escaped from one of its laboratories, in particular those of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Long brushed aside by most experts, this theory brought to the United States by the former Trump administration (2017-2021) has nevertheless made a strong comeback in recent months in the American debate.
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For his part, one of the officials of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Yuan Zhiming, assured Thursday that his establishment had not been the subject of "any leak" or "accident".
The Chinese authorities and the country's media, on the other hand, regularly point the finger at the Fort Detrick laboratory in the United States, as being at the origin of the Covid-19.
Located near Washington, this laboratory is at the heart of American research against bioterrorism.
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According to the Global Times, a resolutely nationalist-tone daily, 5 million Chinese internet users have signed a petition to open an investigation into Fort Detrick.
© 2021 AFP