No way to say whether Covid-19 originated in China, ambassador claims

The Chinese ambassador to Russia has said there is no proof that Covid-19 originated in China, and that the government may have simply managed to detect the virus faster than other countries.

“Indeed, the outbreak was in China. But we can’t say that this coronavirus originated in China. We just discovered it before everyone else did, and took measures against it,” Zhang Hanhui said during a news conference on Wednesday. 

China has been repeatedly accused by the West of a lack of transparency on the origins of the coronavirus. Both US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have repeatedly pushed the theory that the virus was created in a bioweapons lab in Wuhan. Beijing has denied that claim.

Earlier, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed that Beijing is "open" to international cooperation to identify the source of Covid-19, but said the investigation must be "free of political interference”.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has praised China for its "openness" to future scientific inquiries involving foreign experts, into the origins of the coronavirus.

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