News24com US exploiting Covid-19 origin tracing for political manipulation says China embassy
The Embassy of China in South Africa has accused the United States of exploiting the Covid-19 origin tracing for political manipulation.
During a virtual media briefing on Monday, ambassador Chen Xiaodong said China had "nothing to hide" about the virus and has no reservation about sharing information with the world.
AFP previously reported that US President Joe Biden said on Friday that China was withholding "critical information" on the origins of Covid-19.
This after the US intelligence community said it did not believe the virus was a bio-weapon - but remained split on whether it escaped from a lab, the publication reported.
In a statement, Biden said: "Critical information about the origins of this pandemic exists in the People's Republic of China (PRC), yet from the beginning, government officials in China have worked to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community from accessing it. To this day, the PRC continues to reject calls for transparency and withhold information, even as the toll of this pandemic continues to rise."
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But Chen on Monday described this as a "witch hunt". He said the US had undermined global solidarity against the virus.
Chen added that the Covid origin was being studied by scientists all over the world. He also said the Wuhan Institute of Virology never manufactured or leaked the virus.
"China has nothing to hide," he said. "The timeline of China's Covid-19 response prove that China has no reservation about sharing information with the world," Chen said.
"Some US politicians are obsessed with stigmatising the virus by associating it with certain countries."
He also accused the US of using the origin tracing to "smear and attack" China. Xiaodong said the US should stop blaming China and focus on saving lives.
He added that origin tracing takes time and that many US scientists have taken part in tracing the origins of diseases such as Spinach flu and Ebola, and some of the cases have not been solved until today but added that with Covid-19, the US laid blame on China.
"Like all countries in the world, China is a victim of Covid-19, and we all hope to identify the source of this virus as soon as possible, " he said.
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