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After US announcement: China is outraged by investigations into coronavirus origins

2021-05-28T19:40:42.296Z


US President Joe Biden has tasked secret services with the search for the origin of the corona virus, and he expects the report within 90 days. The Chinese embassy in the USA reacts piqued.


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Security guards in front of the Institute of Virology in Wuhan

Photo: THOMAS PETER / REUTERS

It was a tough announcement and the response was prompt.

US President Joe Biden has commissioned American intelligence services to get to the bottom of the origin of the corona pandemic and to submit a report to him within 90 days.

Within the secret service apparatus there are different assessments of the question of whether the virus could have emerged through human contact with an infected animal - or through a laboratory accident.

The Chinese Embassy in the United States has now responded to these statements and rejected them as politically motivated.

Some political forces are "fixated on political manipulation and accusations," it said in a statement on the embassy website.

It prevents the investigations from politicizing the original question.

China supports a "comprehensive investigation of all early cases of Covid-19 worldwide and a thorough investigation into some secret bases and biological laboratories around the world," the statement said.

The corona virus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of 2019.

For a long time, there have been unsubstantiated suspicions that the coronavirus could have come from a laboratory in Wuhan and may have been released in an accident.

However, there are no suspicions that the virus could have come from a laboratory in another country - as suggested by the Chinese embassy.

In a written statement by Biden, it said on Wednesday that the previous investigations into the original question had provided different assessments without conclusive conclusions.

He also revealed that the scenario of a possible laboratory accident in China is believed to be possible, at least in parts of the US intelligence apparatus.

The government of Biden has always called for further investigations into the origin of the virus and continues to do so.

However, Biden has now given space to the laboratory accident thesis and is pushing the search for answers.

China has always vehemently denied the allegations and in the past few days has also denied a report in the Wall Street Journal according to which, according to US intelligence information, three scientists from the Institute of Virology in Wuhan fell so seriously ill in November 2019 that they were being treated in hospital had to.

There are also great international efforts to find out how the devastating pandemic began.

The World Health Organization (WHO) came to the conclusion in a study presented in March that the virus could also originate in pangolins in addition to bats.

The scientists involved described the theory that it could have escaped from a laboratory as "extremely unlikely".

However, the US questioned the quality of the investigation and asked for the investigation to continue.

They accused China of unduly influencing the international experts involved.

Beijing has controlled and restricted the investigations, so the allegation.

The scientists would not have had access to complete original data sets and samples.

The international experts only traveled to Wuhan at the beginning of the year after months of delay from Chinese agencies.

aar / Reuters / dpa

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-05-28

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