Shameless China demands probe into US lab for ‘leaking’ Covid as fresh investigation is ordered into Wuhan cover-up
CHINA has shamelessly demanded that the World Health Organisation (WHO) investigate a military lab in the US over the origins of Covid.
It comes as the Communist Party regime reacted with fury as WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus ordered a fresh probe into claims that SARS-CoV2 may have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called on WHO to instead turn their focus to the US military lab at Fort Detrick in Maryland during a briefing on Wednesday.
And meanwhile, Communist Party-owned media also blasted the apparent U-turn by WHO as they accused them of caving into pressure from the West - fuming they are indulging in "James Bond" fantasies rather than science.
The lab leak theory remains a contender for the original origins of Covid as details of how the virus emerged remain shrouded in mystery some 15 months since the bug was first detected in Wuhan.
Chunying also said other laboratories around the world should also be investigated as she continued China's efforts to deflect blame over Beijing's role in the early days of the outbreak.
She said: "As you know, the Wuhan labs have already been inspected. But when Fort Detrick will open its doors to experts?"
The spokeswoman also said China would continue to cooperate with WHO, but insisted its investigations must "not be limited to some region of the world".
"As for the possibility that the virus leaked after a lab incident, members of the expert group said that they would inspect laboratories all over the world if the need arises," she added.
US military labs at Fort Detrick research infectious diseases - and were temporarily closed in 2019 due to two "breaches of containment", but it was said no one was exposed to any agents or toxins.
China and its state media have long attempted to use the lab as a shield to deflect from questions about WIV - the lab which was known to carrying out controversial gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses before the first outbreak in Wuhan.
It came as Dr Tedros appeared to turn on his own investigators yesterday as the WHO-China joint investigation team released a long awaited and much derided report which ruled out the possibility as "extremely unlikely".
He called for investigations into the pandemic's origins to delve deeper into the theory about a possible lab incident, which the mission had all but ruled out in the report released just minutes before on Tuesday.
The WHO chief also voiced concern that the international team had difficulty accessing raw data during the mission - with China feared to have concealed much information about the early days of Covid.
Chinese state media reacted with characteristic fury as WHO reopened the possibility of the lab leak despite their efforts as part of the joint team to steer them to other possibilities.
Hu Xijin, editor of the Global Times, the state owned tabloid which is often seen as the unfiltered voice of the Communist Party, blasted the US.
"The US has fabricated a conclusion that the virus was leaked from a Wuhan lab. It expected WHO to conduct Sherlock Holmes detective work to validate this charge," he wrote on Twitter.
Despite fears surrounding the research, the study was designed to show the risk of viruses carried by bats which could be transmitted to humans.
There is no suggestion the facility's 2015 work is linked to the pandemic.
The lab was also recruiting new scientists to probe coronaviruses in bats just seven days before the outbreak.
China has began tightening security around its biolabs with President Xi Jinping saying it was a “national security” issue to improve scientific safety at a meeting last February.
WHO's joint investigation saw them spend a week in the Communist Party-state as they were given a carefully stage-managed look at data and evidence accrued by China.
The 123-page report yesterday was blasted by many politicians and scientists, with China long accused of attempting to cover up or distort its role in the story of Covid.
The new report concluded that the virus - which has killed 2.8million people - "likely" crossed from animals to mankind through an as of yet unknown creature.
Documents already revealed Beijing downplayed the bug to “protect its image“, and there have been repeated allegations that China has manipulated its death and case figures.
Jamie Metzl, a WHO advisor and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, who helped organise an open letter signed by 26 scientists calling for a new independent investigation, blasted the probe.
He told The Sun Online: "This joint report isn’t just inadequate, it’s an insult to the billions of people around the world who have suffered from the pandemic."
Tom Tugendhat MP, chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, told The Sun Online: “China’s cover up continues. Even though we need to know where the virus started, Beijing is still blocking scientists to hide the mistakes that unmask their failures.”
He added: "Dictatorships hide the truth by default because they are frightened of their own people - so they must not show weakness, and that is exactly what we are seeing here."
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Tobias Ellwood MP, chair of the Defence Select Committee, told The Sun Online: "Is it right - were this to happen again - that any state can deny the rest of world access for an entire year to discover the cause of the pandemic knowing the scale of death and damage to our economies?
"China has a lot to answer. We know what immense pressure Dr Tedros is under given how China has retaliated to calls for an investigation, but he clearly is not satisfied."