China insists virus data is honest
After report, Beijing’s team says origins possibly elsewhere
SEOUL — Beijing on Wednesday rebuffed criticism from the head of the World Health Organization and foreign governments, saying China had shared coronavirus data openly and cooperated with an international inquiry.
A day after the release of a controversial WHO-China joint report on the coronavirus’s origins, Chinese members of the team said at a news conference in Beijing that the coronavirus wasn’t proved to have originated in China, and the international community should consider the possibility it came from another country.
Liang Wannian, leader of the Chinese side of the WHO-China team, was chilly on the prospect of further inquiries in China, saying they should only take place as needed.
“The experts have visited all the places, met all the people, studied all the facilities, and read all the documents, as they had wished,” said Liang, who is also a public health professor at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.
On Tuesday, the WHO and China released a report on the origins of the coronavirus, which said it most likely jumped from animals to humans through an intermediate animal host and downplayed the probability it leaked from a lab.
The United States and 13 other countries issued a joint statement expressing concern that the WHO-China report was “significantly delayed and lacked access to complete data and samples.” Australia, Canada, Britain, Japan and South Korea were signatories.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday that the report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility of a lab leak. He pointedly said he expected future collaborations to include “more timely and comprehensive data sharing.”
Pushing back against Tedros’s claim that the WHO team was not given access to raw data, Liang said that the experts were provided databases, but it was impractical to present every original record and specimen. Some early biological samples were not retained, he said.
“For this raw data, what do you call raw?” he said. “You can hardly imagine that after our experts arrive at the scene, that they will look at each patient case, each animal specimen, each original record from the earliest days, one after the other.”
As for Tedros’s statement that the possibility of a lab leak should be further investigated, Liang said that follow-up tracing efforts should take place globally, as the virus could have originated in another country.
“I’m not sure if [Tedros] understands this question, because this is a matter for us scientists,” he said. “It will be decided by scientists, and by history.”
Liang said that there were “fierce disputes” between the foreign and Chinese members of the team in producing the report, but called it a normal process of scientific research.
Asked about the possibility of follow-up visits from international experts, Liang said that further investigations in China should take place “on an as-needed basis” and should be preceded by specific plans.
“At present it is premature to talk about,” Liang said. “We have just had that report published.”
Liang said that researchers in China would continue to search for the virus’s origin even if it took generations.
“We will continue the tracing work,” he said. “Every day that the origin hasn’t been found is a day that Chinese scientists will continue working hard.”