Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
Senior epidemiologist China say United States of America should be a priority for further investigation of origins corona virus.
The proposed investigation was called for after reports suggested the disease may have circulated in the US in early December 2019.
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) study released a report that said at least seven people in five US states were infected with SARS-CoV-2, weeks before the government officially reported the first cases.
China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s chief epidemiologist, Zen Guang, said attention should turn to the United States, which has been slow to test people in the early stages of the outbreak.
“All subjects related to state-owned biological weapons must be supervised,” he told Global Times, which is quoted Reuters, Thursday (17/6).
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian also spoke about the US -published report.
He said it was now clear that the Covid-19 outbreak had “multiple sources” and that other countries should cooperate with the World Health Organization (WHO).
The origins of Covid-19 have been a source of political tension between China and the United States. Later they focused on the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the outbreak was first identified in 2019.
China has drawn criticism for its transparency when it comes to disclosing data on initial cases and the virus studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Last March, China and the WHO released the results of an investigation that said it was most likely that the virus came from bats that were transmitted to humans through other animals.
But Beijing says the theory is that the source of Covid-19 that entered China could have come from contamination of frozen food.
A number of foreign politicians insisted on asking for further investigations into the possible source of the virus coming from the Wuhan Laboratory leak.
Previous, Wall Street Journal also reported a study from a US national laboratory that concluded that the virus leak theory was plausible.
Another study reported an increased likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 circulating in Europe as early as September 2019. But experts say that doesn’t mean the virus didn’t originate in China, where many SARS-like coronaviruses have been found in the country.
(isa/dea)
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