USA, 27 MAY. US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he is calling on the intelligence community to submit a report within three months on the origins of Covid-19 amid a resurgent debate over how the virus first appeared. The president has said the report should look into “whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident” and present questions that may require further confirmation, including potential queries for China. “I have now asked the intelligence community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion and to report back to me in 90 days,” Mr Biden said. The move comes during a growing controversy on how to handle an investigation into the origins of the virus, which has killed more than 3.5 million people globally.
“We need to get to the bottom of this,” deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “As we all know, we’ve lost almost 600,000 Americans to Covid-19 and we have to get a better sense of the origins of Covid-19 and also, how do we prevent the next pandemic?” The first virus cluster was reported to the World Health Organisation in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, fuelling theories that Covid-19 might have escaped from the lab. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on Wednesday said the US was “spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation, such as a laboratory leak”.
“Some people in the United States claim they want the truth but their real intention is political manipulation,” Mr Zhao said. Members of the former president Donald Trump’s administration favoured the laboratory leak theory, including former Centres for Disease Control and Prevention chief Dr Robert Redfield. Many scientists, including WHO members, say the theory is unlikely.
The UN agency co-ordinated an investigation by independent scientists who visited Wuhan, China, and their report concluded that the virus most probably jumped to humans from bats. Global leaders, scientists and WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus have said the investigation was not extensive enough. Meanwhile, there are concerns that investigations into Covid’s beginnings could fuel anti-Asian sentiment, which has increased in the US in recent months.
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