International community resists politicizing COVID-19 origin tracing and seeks cooperation in pandemic fight

While turning a blind eye to the authoritative and science-based results of the report of the World Health Organization (WHO) on a joint study conducted with China on tracing the origins of COVID-19, the United States and a few other countries have recently continued to hype up the so-called “lab leak” theory and politicize the virus origin-tracing process.

At a crucial moment in the world’s joint battle against the raging pandemic, the US, however, once again has spread its “political virus” and has gone about exhausting all the possibilities it can muster to smear China, a move that has severely disrupted global efforts in anti-pandemic cooperation.

The “lab leak” theory is a conspiracy that has been hatched by the US. On July 7 this year, over 20 experts from various countries published a preliminary report of their findings on Zenodo, a European platform for scientific data sharing, pointing out that there is no evidence that the early cases were connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in any way.

A few days earlier, on July 5, 24 world-renowned experts, including doctors, epidemiologists, virologists, biologists, ecologists and public health experts, published a joint statement in a British peer-reviewed general medical journal, The Lancet, in which they stressed that there has been no scientific evidence to support the so-called lab leak theory. Recent peer-reviewed studies strongly suggest that COVID-19 has a natural origin.

Against such a backdrop, why has the US chosen to hype the theory that the novel coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab while clamoring for a second-phase plan into the origin of the coronavirus in China?

Alexander Semyonov, a leading Russian virologist and head of the Yekaterinburg branch of the State Research Center of the Virology and Biotechnology Vector Institute, recently slammed the hyping of the “lab leak” theory by the US as an attempt to falsely place blame on China. He said that the continued US accusations that a Chinese lab was the source of the coronavirus was being completely driven by politics; and, that it was “pure fantasy” to think that a coronavirus could be created using artificial methods.

On the issue of origin tracing, China has always upheld a spirit of openness, transparency, science and cooperation. Earlier this year, a joint expert team comprising leading experts from 10 countries, including the US, the UK, Japan and Australia, conducted a 28-day joint research project in China together with their Chinese counterparts. On March 30, the WHO issued its report on the joint research effort, clarifying that a lab leakage was extremely unlikely. The formulation of this report follows WHO procedures and adopts a scientific approach. The report has been widely recognized and has garnered the respect of the international community. China’s open and transparent attitude on tracing the origins of the virus has also been fully recognized by international experts.

As a matter of fact, it is the universal consensus of the international community to reject any political manipulation of the issue of origin tracing.

On June 27, the Syrian Foreign Ministry issued a statement opposing the politicization of COVID-19 origin tracing and supporting China’s position on the issue. The Syrian side said that certain countries including the US have recently taken provocative acts of politicizing the issue, openly negated the results of the joint WHO-China study report, challenged the authority of international scientists, asked intelligence agencies to investigate the coronavirus’ origins, and exerted political pressure on the WHO. With these actions, they used virus origin tracing as a tool to launch political attacks against other countries, especially China. These actions have severely disrupted the basic laws and atmosphere for conducting scientific research, hindered global anti-virus efforts, and intensified political confrontation and division.

South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, recently tweeted that it supported scientific-based enquiries into the origin tracing of the COVID19 pandemic, and called for global cooperation while decrying the politicization of such investigations. It said that high-income countries have resorted to “vaccine nationalism” and have created a kind of vaccine apartheid, resulting in increased numbers and rates of morbidities and mortalities in the developing world and a degradation of economic development leading to increased poverty and inequality.

On Aug. 2, over 300 political parties, social organizations and think tanks from 100-plus countries and regions around the world submitted a joint statement to the WHO Secretariat, calling on the WHO to conduct its study on COVID-19 origin tracing objectively and fairly, and firmly opposed the politicization of origin tracing.

It’s obvious to all that treating the origin tracing of the virus as a serious issue of science and getting rid of political interference represents the will of the international community.

The question now is when will the US respond to the international community’s questions about Fort Detrick, clear the suspicions over its 200 plus biological laboratories situated around the world, and invite the WHO to conduct investigations in the country as China has done?

Politicizing the COVID-19 origin-tracing process will neither help to promote scientific research or the discovery of the truth, nor contribute to global efforts towards anti-pandemic cooperation. The international community should join hands to ensure science-based and serious origin-tracing research, oppose politicizing origin tracing, and promote global cooperation in the fight against the virus so as to prevent similar epidemics in the future.

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