The U.S. and China staked out sharply opposing positions over how to trace the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, with Washington calling for a new round of studies to be conducted with independent, international experts.
Beijing, meanwhile, told an annual gathering of the World Health Organization’s decision-making body Tuesday that it considered the investigation in its country to be complete and said attention should now turn to other countries.
The dueling opinions, expressed during a meeting of nearly 200 governments, appear hard to reconcile and show the political tensions hindering an effort to find the source of a virus that first began to spread in China. Under global health regulations, China would have to give its consent for WHO to send international scientists into the country again for further studies.
Earlier this year, a team of scientists convened by the WHO spent a month in China, as part of an effort to understand the origins of the pandemic.
However, the team was largely confined to reviewing research conducted by Chinese state scientists. Some team members expressed frustration that they weren’t given full access to the data Chinese counterparts used to conclude there was little evidence of Covid-19 in China before the first confirmed cases in early December 2019.
Source Article from https://www.wsj.com/articles/inquiry-into-covid-19s-origins-splits-u-s-and-china-11621969480
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