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US not ready to accept WHO findings that COVID-19 didn’t come from Wuhan lab
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The United States is not yet agreeing to accept the World Health Organization’s findings in its probe of the origins of the coronavirus — which allegedly dispelled the theory that it was artificially created in a lab in Wuhan, China.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, State Department spokesman Ned Price declined to offer a US response to the WHO’s findings released that day.
The agency, which launched what it described as a probe into the origins of the pandemic, downplayed the likelihood that it was leaked from a lab in the Hubei province sometime in late 2019.
Rumors of the virus being artificially manufactured have hounded the Chinese government since the pandemic went global.
“Broadly speaking, we have expressed our concerns regarding the need for full transparency and access from China and the WHO — access from China and the WHO to all information regarding the earliest days of the pandemic,” Price noted in one part of his answer.
“So where we are today is that we look forward to receiving this report and the full data and to digging into that ourselves, knowing that we do need that full transparency,” he continued.
Asked if the United States was satisfied with the level of transparency Beijing had provided to document what caused the pandemic, Price said “the jury is still out.”
“I think, clearly, the Chinese, at least heretofore, had not offered the requisite transparency that we need and that just as importantly, again, the international community needs so that we can prevent these sorts of pandemics from ever happening again.”
“The WHO is leading this investigation. We clearly support this investigation. We recognize there is an urgent need for an investigation,” he continued, “But I wouldn’t want to be conclusive yet about any sort of cooperation that the WHO may or may not have received from China.”
President Biden rejoined the embattled global health agency by executive order during his first week in office.
Former President Trump had withdrawn the nation from the agency last July due to its botched handling of the pandemic and frequent appeasement of China.
China, a nation that has faced a wave of international scrutiny over the past few years relating to their activities in Hong Kong and the mass internment of Uighurs, has seen global tensions reach new heights amid their refusal to accept responsibility for a lack of transparency and negligence at the onset of the outbreak.
As the virus grew completely out of Beijing’s control last year, Chinese Communist Party officials and state media went on offense, praising the Communist regime’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic while mounting an aggressive effort to combat the international condemnation.
In the week before China began briefing the WHO, more than 3,000 unknowing individuals were exposed and infected, while government leadership remained silent.
Audio recordings and documents taken between January and April of last year and obtained by the Associated Press in November revealed that leaders at the WHO declined to publicly call out countries with political clout that made repeated mistakes.
In dozens of recordings over the four-month period, the WHO repeatedly shied away from criticizing China, as well as Japan, France and Britain.
The agency defended itself against an onslaught of criticism over its unwillingness to hold any nations accountable for the virus at the time.
In a statement, a WHO spokeswoman said that since the beginning of the outbreak, “WHO officials have had and continue to have, frank and open discussions with government counterparts … We are proud of an organizational culture that fosters candid discussion with the aim of reaching life-saving solutions.”
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