Defending their search for the source of the Covid-19 virus, Chinese health officials on Saturday hit out at the World Health Organisation after the global health body’s director-general said Beijing should have shared genetic information earlier.
The director of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Shen Hongbing, said the WHO comments were “offensive and disrespectful”.
He accused the WHO of “attempting to smear China” and said it should avoid helping others “politicize COVID-19”, news agency Associated Press reported.
The global health body’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on March 17 said that newly disclosed genetic material gathered in Wuhan in central China, where the first cases were detected in late 2019, “should have been shared three years ago”.
“As a responsible country and as scientists, we have always actively shared research results with scientists from around the world,” Shen said at a news conference.
The origins of Covid-19 are still debated and the focus of a bitter political row. Many scientists believe it jumped from animals to humans at a market in Wuhan, but the city is also home to laboratories, including China’s top facility for collecting viruses. That prompted suggestions COVID-19 might have leaked from one, according to the Associated Press.
The ruling Communist Party has tried to ward off criticism of its handling of the outbreak by spreading uncertainty about its origins.
Officials have repeated anti-US conspiracy theories that the virus was created by Washington and smuggled into China. The government also says the virus might have entered China via food shipments, though scientists abroad see no evidence to support that.
Chinese officials suppressed information about the Wuhan outbreak in 2019 and punished a doctor who warned others about the new disease.
The ruling party reversed course in early 2020 and shut down access to major cities and most international travel to contain the disease.
