Photographer: Go Nakamura / Getty Images
Photographer: Go Nakamura / Getty Images
The Foreign Ministry said on Friday that it had new information suggesting that the Covid-19 pandemic could have originated from a Chinese laboratory and not through contact with infected animals, the latest salvo in the effort of the Trump administration to put Beijing under pressure over the origin of the virus.
Specifically, the U.S. said it had found new evidence that researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in the fall of 2019, ahead of the first identified case of the outbreak in the surrounding city, with symptoms they said were similar to Covid- 19. or common seasonal diseases.
The department said China’s lack of transparency about the origins of the pandemic more than a year ago, as well as attempts to disguise early shortcomings in the country’s response to the outbreak, make it difficult to draw clear conclusions. But the brief, unsigned statement issued by the US – less than a week before the end of the Trump administration – provided no data to substantiate its claims.
“The virus could of course have originated through human contact with infected animals, which has spread in a pattern similar to a natural epidemic,” according to the State Department. “Alternatively, a laboratory accident may look like a natural outbreak, if the initial exposure involves only a few individuals and worsens asymptomatic infection.”
A State Department spokesman declined to comment when asked for further comment.
China has repeatedly rejected allegations that the virus may have originated from a laboratory. The US did not say how they obtained the new disease information in the lab.
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The comments on a State Department fact sheet come because China is being criticized for initially preventing some members of a World Health Organization mission from entering China as part of an effort to trace the origins of Covid-19 and said have that they have not passed the health. performances. While the experts eventually gave approval, China has already been criticized by the WHO for delaying the mission’s mission to visit the country.
China has been under scrutiny since the outbreak exploded in and around Wuhan, but the Trump administration has also sought to place more blame on Beijing’s authorities after the US pandemic escalated and deaths skyrocketed. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo frequently refer to the disease as the “China virus”, “China plague” and “Wuhan virus.”
China, in turn, is conducting a campaign to question the virus that is emerging within its borders. State media investigated research suggesting that there were cases in Italy and the US that preceded those in Wuhan, alluding to the fact that the pathogen could enter the country with frozen food or packaging.
It was announced on Friday that 2 million people worldwide had died from the outbreak, with nearly 400,000 deaths in the US