China rejected Thursday, July 22 the WHO proposal to continue the investigation into the origin of the pandemic in the Asian country, where the first patients of Covid-19 were identified at the end of 2019.
Read also: Origin of the pandemic: WHO requests laboratory control in China
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last week requested an audit of laboratories in areas where the first cases of coronavirus were identified - a reference to the Chinese city of Wuhan, a time ago epicenter of the epidemic.
This proposal is a "
lack of respect for common sense and an arrogance towards science,
" said Chinese Vice Minister of Health Zeng Yixin on Thursday.
Beijing has always denied the thesis of the laboratory
China revealed to the WHO on December 31, 2019 the existence of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, which later turned out to be coronavirus cases.
But Beijing has always fiercely fought the theory that the Covid-19 could have escaped from one of its laboratories, including those in Wuhan.
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.
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.
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.