Making the virus a political tool is bad for everyone and must end, say experts

It is critical that the hunt for the origins of COVID-19 transcend politics and borders, experts say.

Politicization of health issues runs counter to global interests, said Xu Liping, a researcher at the National Institute of International Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, adding that global solidarity should be ramped up to solve the pandemic rather than politicizing it.

The remarks came after US President Joe Biden recently ordered an official investigation into the origins of possible links between the novel coronavirus and a laboratory in Wuhan.

Late last month Jake Sullivan, a US national security adviser, said China will face “isolation in the international community” if it does not cooperate with a further investigation into the origin of the pandemic, Bloomberg reported.

China’s Foreign Ministry has repeatedly criticized the US for turning the tracing of the origin of COVID-19 into a political issue, saying this has seriously undermined international collaboration and put up obstacles to combating the virus and saving lives.

On Wednesday the ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin stressed again that a World Health Organization joint mission report had made it clear that a laboratory leak was “extremely unlikely” to be the origin of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Regrettably, he said, some in the US had blatantly engaged in political maneuvering on the issue of origin, their aim being to shift responsibility for their own failures onto China.

The authentic conclusion reached by the WHO joint mission will not change, he said, adding that looking for the origins of the virus should not be limited to a single area but should be carried out in many countries and regions.

The US’ recent move aims to smear China and stir up anti-China sentiment to serve its own strategic purposes, Xu said.

“The US also needs a scapegoat because of its ineptitude in dealing with the pandemic and its failure to keep the virus at bay. So China is made to shoulder the blame,” Xu said.

According to Johns Hopkins University, the US has the most COVID-19 infections of any country, with more than 33.8 million confirmed cases and more than 607,100 deaths by Sunday.

Julio Yao Villalaz, an international observer in Panama, said in an article last month that the US’ insistence on blaming China had harmed global efforts to rein in the virus.

“Politicization of the pandemic, which includes a broad-spectrum anti-China racist campaign, has caused great damage worldwide, especially to China and the US itself, because it diverts attention from responsibility for (looking for) its origin,” Xinhua News Agency quoted Yao Villalaz, who is also honorary president and president-in-charge of Panama’s Center for Asian Strategic Studies, as saying.

Investigators should be given access to US laboratories, including “the microbial laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the main center of the biological weapons program of the US Army Medical Command, (which) abruptly closed in August 2019”, Yao Villalaz said.

Field study

A WHO team has completed a field study in Wuhan, where cluster infections were first reported. In February the team of international experts concluded that it was “extremely unlikely” the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Dominic Dwyer, a member of the WHO joint study team on the origins of viruses, has also warned against politicizing the search for the origins of the virus.

Writing in The Guardian, he said claims of a laboratory leak are easy to make and understand and cater to political discourse, but no clear evidence has emerged that any of those theories is true.

Danielle Anderson, an Australian virologist who worked at the institute’s biosafety level-4 laboratory until November 2019, dismissed the speculation and accusations about the Wuhan Institute of Virology doing gain-of-function research on the coronavirus and leaking the virus, saying it was distorted in the media.

She made the remarks in an interview with Bloomberg, adding that there was no evidence to substantiate the accusations, saying she believes the virus is a natural occurrence.

Early last year people in the US threatened her after she exposed false information about the pandemic on the internet, and she had filed a complaint with police over the threats, she said.

The US also needs a scapegoat because of its ineptitude in dealing with the pandemic and its failure to keep the virus at bay. So China is made to shoulder the blame.”

Xu Liping, researcher at the National Institute of International Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences