After renewed interest in the origins of COVID-19, China claimed on Tuesday that it had been “open and transparent” in the investigation.
In recent times, the U.S. According to the Department of Energy, there is “low confidence” that a virus leak from a lab caused the pandemic to start, initially identified in the city of Wuhan in central China in late 2019.
The report is not available to the public.
Mao Ning Mao, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry, told reporters at a regular briefing that China had “provided the most data and research results on virus tracking and made significant contributions to worldwide virus tracing research.”
In response to accusations from U.S. officials and members of Congress that China has not been cooperative, Mao remarked,
“Politically polarizing the topic of viral tracing would not defame China but will only undermine the U.S.’s reputation.”
Her remarks come amid ongoing inquiries into the virus’s origins that has killed more than 6.8 million people worldwide.
Some members of the American intelligence community oppose the U.S. Assessment of the lab leak by the Energy Department, indicating conflicting views within the executive branch.
On Monday, the National Security Council’s spokesman, John Kirby, stated that there is “simply not an intelligence community consensus.”
The Wall Street Journal broke the initial news on the DOE’s findings over the weekend, claiming that the classified assessment was based on fresh intelligence and mentioned in an update to a 2021 document.
The DOE is in charge of the U.S.’s national lab network.
On Monday, White House representatives declined to confirm press reports regarding the evaluation.
According to a summary of an intelligence study that was made public in 2021, four members of the American intelligence community had a low degree of confidence that the virus had initially infected a human from an animal, and a fifth had a moderate degree of confidence.
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