COVID-19 Origins Probe Should Shift to the US: Says A Chinese Disease Expert

COVID-19 started back in December 2019 in China. A senior Chinese expert says that the United States should be the priority in the next phase of investigation as some traces of the virus could have been present as early as December 2019.

According to the study conducted by the US National Institutes for Health (NIH), seven people were reported to have been infected by the disease SARS-CoV-2, the origin of COVID-19, few weeks before the first official cases were reported.

Zeng Guang, the chief epidemiologist with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told Global Times that the investigation should shift to the US. He also said that it was slow to test people in the early stages. And also that the US is the home to many biological laboratories.

“All bio-weapons related subjects that the country has should be subject to scrutiny,” he was quoted as saying.

Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that the reports revealed that the COVID-19 has more than one origin. He also urged other countries to cooperate with the World Health Organization (WHO).

Political tension has risen between China and the US on the origin of the pandemic. Most of the focus was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in Wuhan where the first outbreak was identified back in 2019.

The US government national laboratory concluded in its report the virus had leaked from the Wuhan lab.

A previous study brought up the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 have spread in Europe as early as September 2019, but there is no concrete evidence on it.

The first coronavirus case was registered back in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. After that, the outbreak spread to the rest of the world. To date, a total of 177 million cases have been registered worldwide with a death toll of 3.83 million.

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