The Chinese government will not take part in a second phase of the World Health Organization (WHO) investigation into the origin of Covid-19, said a senior health official, as the proposal included the possibility of the virus coming out of a laboratory in Wuhan.
Zeng Yixin, deputy chairman of the National Health Commission, told a news conference in Beijing he was "surprised" to hear the lab exit listed as a search target for the second phase of the investigation.
"In some respects, the WHO plan for the next phase of the investigation of the origin of the coronavirus does not respect sound reason and is against science. It is impossible for us to accept such a plan," he said.
Zeng also responded to US State Department claims that some workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) fell ill shortly before the first cases documented with Covid-19, saying that "no employee or researcher in the WIV was not infected with the coronavirus ".
The WHO released an initial report from the investigation into the origin of Covid-19 in March. The WHO team of experts that traveled to China said that most likely, the coronavirus was transmitted from bats to humans through another animal. But a growing number of Western nations, including G7 leaders, have questioned the completeness of the original report.
A few days ago, the head of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, proposed the audit of laboratories in China during a meeting with member countries of the organization. He said that in order to advance the investigation it was necessary to carry out "checks of relevant laboratories and active research institutions in the region where the first cases were identified in December 2019".
His request came a day after he said it was premature to rule out a possible link between the pandemic and a "laboratory leak". He also urged China to be more transparent, noting that access to raw data was a challenge for the international team that traveled to China earlier this year to investigate the source of Covid-19.
