Beijing rejects WHO push to investigate leak theory

China has dismissed World Health Organisation plans to revisit the theory that Covid-19 leaked from a laboratory. The WHO wants to begin a second phase study on how the virus broke out, including audits of laboratories and markets in the city of Wuhan. Beijing vehemently denies that the virus may have escaped, accidentally or otherwise, from a high-security biological lab in Wuhan, where the first infections were reported in December 2019. A joint investigation by Chinese scientists and experts picked by the WHO concluded this year that this was ‘‘extremely unlikely’’ but a growing number of scientists believe that it is too early to rule it out. The United States has urged China to release information that might provide answers.