India backs calls for further probe into Covid-19 origins

Without naming China, govt says follow up of WHO report and further studies ‘deserve the understanding and cooperation of all’

NEW DELHI: India on Friday backed calls for further investigations into the origin of Covid-19 and sought the cooperation of China and other parties for such studies, days after US President Joe Biden asked intelligence agencies to submit a fresh report on the issue.

Biden’s directive to the US intelligence community to redouble their efforts to collect information to facilitate a definitive conclusion on the origin of the coronavirus has angered China, which said on Thursday that the US is playing politics. China again dismissed the theory that the virus could have leaked from a laboratory.

External affairs ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the World Health Organization (Who)-led study was an “important first step”, but more studies were needed to reach “robust conclusions”.

“The WHO convened global study on the origin of Covid-19 is an important first step. It stressed the need for next phase studies as also for further data and studies to reach robust conclusions,” Bagchi said in a statement.

Without naming China, he added, “The follow up of the WHO report and further studies deserve the understanding and cooperation of all.”

This comes at a time when multiple news reports have spoken of several angles the American intelligence is looking at. On Thursday, the New York Times reported that Biden’s directions to the intelligence agencies came on the basis of yet-to-be examined evidence that requires computer analysis.

Citing people aware of the situation, the report said that this evidence could include databases of Chinese communications, movement of lab workers and the pattern of the outbreak of Covid-19 in and around Wuhan, the ground zero of the pandemic.

On May 23, a report by the Wall Street Journal cited current and former officials to describe intelligence reports that determined that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick with flulike symptoms in November, 2019.

The report notes that while this in itself was not enough to link to a lab leak, the timing and the number of people who fell sick and their ties to the lab