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China says it’s been ‘open and transparent’ on COVID origins

Published:Tuesday | February 28, 2023 | 8:39 AM
People, some wearing face masks visit the Temple of Heaven park in Beijing, Sunday, February 26, 2023. Visitors flock to the tourist sites in cities in China after authorities lifted all bans on public gatherings from the outbreak of COVID-19. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

BEIJING (AP) — China on Tuesday said it has been “open and transparent” in the search for the origins of COVID-19, after questions about how the pandemic began received new attention.

Most recently, the United States Department of Energy assessed with “low confidence” that the pandemic that was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 began with the leak of a virus from a lab. The report hasn't been made public.

China had “shared the most data and research results on virus tracing and made important contributions to global virus tracing research,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning Mao told reporters at a daily briefing.

“Politicising the issue of virus tracing will not smear China but will only damage the US's own credibility,” Mao said, in response to complaints from US officials and members of Congress that China has not been entirely cooperative.

Her comments came amid continuing questions about how the virus that has killed more than 6.8 million people worldwide first emerged.

Others in the US intelligence community disagree with the US Energy Department assessment of the lab leak, citing differing opinions within the government.

“There is just not an intelligence community consensus,” John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said Monday.

The DOE conclusion was first reported over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal, which said the classified report was based on new intelligence and noted in an update to a 2021 document.

The DOE oversees a national network of labs in the US.

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