29 May , 2021 By : Debdeep Gupta
China has hit back after United States President Joe Biden ordered a review of the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, saying the US government's "motive and purposes are clear" and called the decision political manipulation.
Biden on May 26 ordered US intelligence agencies to submit a report within 90 days on whether the coronavirus had an animal source or emerged in a laboratory accident.
There is a theory that the novel coronavirus (SAR-CoV-2) emerged from a laboratory accident in Wuhan, the capital of China's Hubei province, where the first case was reported.
It was initially believed that the coronavirus was transmitted from bats to humans but scientists have been calling for a thorough investigation to better understand the virus to control the outbreak.
The US government's "motive and purposes are clear", Zhao Lijian, a foreign ministry spokesman, was quoted as saying by AFP. He also referred to the "dark history" of the US intelligence community.
Reviving the lab leak theory "is disrespectful to science... and also a disruption to the global fight against the pandemic", Zhao said on May 27.
Reuters reported that the Chinese embassy in the US said: "some political forces have been fixated on political manipulation and (the) blame game".
China supports "a comprehensive study of all early cases of COVID-19 found worldwide and a thorough investigation into some secretive bases and biological laboratories all over the world," it said.
The first cases of COVID-19 were reported in Wuhan in December 2019. China has denied the lab-leak theory of the origins of the pandemic.
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