China is desperate to rewrite the pandemic narrative. The Asian country rejected, Thursday, July 22, the proposal of the World Health Organization (WHO) to continue the investigation into the origin of the pandemic on its territory, where the first patients in the world of Covid-19 have were identified at the end of 2019.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last week requested an audit of laboratories in regions where the first cases of coronavirus were identified – a reference to the Chinese city of Wuhan, a time at the epicenter of the ‘epidemic.
Chinese Vice Minister of Health Zeng Yixin said “Extremely surprised” by this proposal. It’s a “Lack of respect for common sense and an arrogance towards science”, said Mr. Zeng at a press conference.
Draw attention to the United States
China disclosed to the WHO on December 31, 2019 the existence of an outbreak of pneumonia cases in Wuhan. But Beijing has always fiercely fought the theory that Covid-19 could have escaped from one of its laboratories, in particular those of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Long brushed aside by most experts, this theory brought to the United States by the former Trump administration has nevertheless returned in force 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“No leakage” or” accident “.
The Chinese authorities and the country’s media, on the other hand, regularly point to the Fort Detrick laboratory in the United States as being at the origin of Covid-19. Located near Washington, this laboratory is at the heart of American research against bioterrorism. According to Global Times, daily with a resolutely nationalist tone, five million Chinese Internet users signed a petition for the opening of an investigation into Fort Detrick.