Covid-19 coronavirus: China claims it has been ‘open and transparent’ about origin of the virus

People, some wearing face masks, visit the Temple of Heaven park in Beijing after authorities lifted all bans on public gatherings from the outbreak of Covid-19. Photo / Andy Wong, AP

China said it has been “open and transparent” in the search for the origins of Covid-19, after questions about how the pandemic began received new attention.

Most recently, the US Department of Energy assessed with “low confidence” that the pandemic that was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 began with the leak of a virus from a lab. The report hasn’t been made public.

China had “shared the most data and research results on virus tracing and made important contributions to global virus tracing research,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning Mao told reporters at a daily briefing.

“Politicising the issue of virus tracing will not smear China but will only damage the US’s own credibility,” Mao said, in response to complaints from US officials and members of Congress that China has not been entirely co-operative.

Her comments came amid continuing questions about how the virus that has killed more than 6.8 million people worldwide first emerged.

Others in the US intelligence community disagree with the US Energy Department assessment of the lab leak, citing differing opinions within the government. “There is just not an intelligence community consensus,” John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said Monday.

The DOE conclusion was first reported over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal, which said the classified report was based on new intelligence and noted in an update to a 2021 document. The DOE oversees a national network of labs in the US.

White House officials declined to confirm press reports about the assessment.

In 2021, officials released an intelligence report summary that said four members of the US intelligence community believed with low confidence that the virus was first transmitted from an animal to a human, and a fifth believed with moderate confidence that the first human infection was linked to a lab.

A Chinese virologist, who sounded the alarm in early 2020 about where the coronavirus came from, immediately cast doubt on China’s latest claims and said the recent US report was a “milestone achievement”.

Dr Li Meng Yan told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight in September 2020 that the Chinese government intentionally manufactured and released the Covid-19 virus, leading to shutdowns and deaths.

Host Tucker Carlson asked Dr Yan on Monday whether she still believed the virus was intentionally released nearly three years after the pandemic started.

“Of course, it was not an accident,” she responded.

“I can tell you, based on the print protocol and also the other surveillance system, it would be impossible for the lab leak to accidentally happen in such a lab and cause the Wuhan outbreak and also the pandemic.

“So definitely now we just reached the first step. It was from China’s lab, and we need to pursue the truth of origin, and we need to keep going on.”

Dr Yan said, based on the evidence she has seen and the source she has spoken to, the virus was “intentionally brought out of this strict lab and released in the community”.

“However, I don’t think the outbreak in Wuhan was intentional.

“I would say it was because the CCP government and the military scientists underestimated the transmissibility,” she added.

- Additional reporting from news.com.au.