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Coronavirus China
OpinionComment
Sun Xi
Sun Xi

Opinion | No one wins in the West’s politicisation of the Covid-19 origin probe to attack China

  • The US and its allies have too casually dismissed the findings by a joint WHO-China team that found no evidence of a lab leak
  • The important work of tracing the virus’ origin should be a matter for science, not politicians who appear bent on pinning the blame on China

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
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Security personnel keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, Hubei province, during the visit by a WHO team tasked with investigating the origins of Covid-19, on February 3. Photo: Reuters
Sun Xi

The Covid-19 pandemic has become one of the deadliest in recent history and is still evolving. As of now, it has infected around 180 million people and caused more than 3.8 million deaths. Moreover, it has caused significant social and economic disruption globally and triggered political distrust and tensions.

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It is necessary to find the origins of the virus, but the tracing should be a matter of science rather than geopolitics.
First, the joint WHO-China investigation should be respected. The Covid-19 virus was first reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, but that does not necessarily mean the virus originated in China.

As we know, the first Aids patient was identified in the United States in 1981, but scientists later traced the origin of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) back to chimpanzees and the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in Africa.

The joint team from the World Health Organization and China concluded its four-week field trip study on February 9. The joint research report it produced supported the natural outbreak theory and clearly stressed it was “extremely unlikely” that the Covid-19 virus was leaked from a Chinese lab.

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Nature or lab leak? Why tracing the origin of Covid-19 matters

Nature or lab leak? Why tracing the origin of Covid-19 matters

It goes without saying that China welcomed such a conclusion, while those who claimed China was to blame for the outbreak were not satisfied. However, if we cannot trust the WHO, the top global agency responsible for public health, who else can we rely on?

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