People wait in line at a Covid-19 testing site in Beijing. (AP Photo / Mark Schiefelbein)
China, in addition to denying US allegations that COVID-19 has emerged from a biological laboratory in Wuhan, also denied that it emanated from a wet market in the central Chinese city of bats or pangolins before infecting humans.
- News18.com Beijing
- Last update: October 9, 2020 9:55 PM IST
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China claimed on Friday that the coronavirus broke out in various parts of the world last year, but was the only one to report and act first, refuting the widely held view that the deadly contagion originated in Wuhan before becoming a problem. pandemic. China, in addition to denying US allegations that COVID-19 has emerged from a biological laboratory in Wuhan, also denied that it emanated from a wet market in the central Chinese city of bats or pangolins before infecting humans.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said at a press conference that “coronavirus is a new type of virus as more and more facts emerge, as reports reveal, we all know that the epidemic broke out in various locations around the world late last year, while China was the first to report the outbreak, identified the pathogen and shared the genome sequence with the world. ” Hua’s comments came in response to accusations by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of a cover-up by the ruling Communist Party of China (CCP). The coronavirus crisis was made infinitely worse by the Chinese Communist Party cover-up, Pompeo said in Tokyo at the QUAD ministerial meeting of the United States, India, Australia and Japan on Tuesday.
The statement by the Chinese Foreign Ministry was made as the World Health Organization (WHO) was preparing to investigate the origin of the deadly coronavirus. According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the contagion has infected more than 36 million people and killed more than 1 million worldwide.
The United States is the most affected country with more than 7.6 million cases and more than 2.12,000 deaths. China has reported 90,736 cases and 4,739 deaths from COVID-19.
The WHO has provided Beijing with a list of global experts to be sent to China to investigate the origin of the coronavirus, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on Thursday. WHO is awaiting approval. In May, the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA), WHO’s Geneva-based decision-making body currently headed by India, passed a unanimous resolution to investigate the origin of the virus. China also supported the resolution.
In August, a two-member team from WHO, visiting China, completed preliminary work for the investigation of the animal source and reservoirs of COVID-19 that first emerged in Wuhan in December last year. On Monday, the executive director of the WHO health emergencies program, Mike Ryan, told a special meeting of the organization’s executive board that a list of candidates has been presented to the Chinese authorities for their consideration and for next steps. in order to deploy that team.
Hua, while refuting Pompeo’s accusation of cover-up, said that a high-level group of Chinese scientists first identified person-to-person transmission due to the coronavirus on January 19. After thorough investigation and investigation, China made the decision in the oldest city of Wuhan closed to the outside world and put in place the most rigorous measures to isolate the city of Wuhan and Hubei province, Hua said.
He said that the CCP Politburo discussed the virus outbreak on the first day of the Lunar New Year in January and called a meeting on the outbreak of its 31 provinces and municipalities, and activated the level one emergency response. On January 23, when China shut down Wuhan, there were only nine confirmed cases outside of China and the US had just one.
On February 2, when the United States closed its border to Chinese citizens, the United States only officially confirmed a dozen cases. Now confirmed cases in the US have exceeded 7.5 million and 2.10 lakh deaths, he said. How could the most powerful country in the world with the best medical resources at hand screw up the tests so badly? Why has the United States not discovered this virus as soon as possible, and why has it not taken swift action to test as many people as possible to prevent and control the spread of this virus? Hua asked.
COVID-19, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December last year, also hit the world economy with the International Monetary Fund saying that the global economy is destined to suffer a “severe recession.” Scientists are racing against time to find a vaccine or drug to treat coronavirus patients.
(With PTI inputs)
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