China hindering Covid origins inquiry: Biden

WASHINGTON/LONDON: President Joe Biden rebuked China for stonewalling a US investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, as his administration reported it was unable to reach firm conclusions because of Beijing’s unwillingness to cooperate. China denied that it had hindered the probe.

“To this day, the PRC (the People’s Republic of China) continues to reject calls for transparency and withhold information, even as the toll of this pandemic continues to rise,” Biden said in a statement. “We must have a full and transparent accounting of this global tragedy. Nothing less is acceptable.” US intelligence has ruled out that the coronavirus was developed as a weapon, and most agencies assess with “low confidence” it was not genetically engineered.

But the community remains divided on the pathogen’s origins, with four agencies and the National Intelligence Council judging in favour of natural exposure to an animal as the likely explanation, and one agency favouring the lab leak theory. Analysts at three agencies were unable to reach a conclusion.

“All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident,” the office of the director of national intelligence said in a short two-page summary of their findings. The intelligence community and global scientists lack clinical samples or epidemiological data from the earliest Covid-19 cases, it added.

Biden said the US would continue to work with allies to press Beijing to share more information and cooperate with the World Health Organization.

China’s embassy in Washington on Friday accused the US intelligence community of “political manipulation”.