China has tried to deflect blame for the coronavirus pandemic that has infected almost 11 million worldwide, saying it started in another nation.
JULY 4, 20201:26PM
China has blamed Spain for coronavirus suggesting COVID-19 originated in Europe and not Wuhan.
Senior government health adviser Wang Guangfa referenced research in Barcelona which detected COVID-19 in a wastewater sample from March 2019 to suggest any investigation into its origins should look at Spain, reports The Sun.
It comes ahead of a World Health Organisation “scoping mission” to China next week which aims to establish a platform to trace the emergence of the killer virus which has now claimed more than 500,000 deaths globally.
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Independent experts have slammed the research as flawed and contradictory to strong evidence suggesting the virus started in China in late 2019.
Director of the UCL Genetics Institute in London Professor Francois Balloux said: “The most plausible explanation is sample mix-up/contamination.”
But officials from the communist regime, which has repeatedly tried to deflect blame, insisted any investigation into how and where the pandemic started should not be confined to the one country.
Chief epidemiologist for the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention told state-tun Global Times: “Identifying the source of the coronavirus must be based on negotiations and involve multiple countries.
“It does not matter which country the scientific identification work starts with, as long as it involves all related countries and is fairly conducted.”
Medical workers carrying a man who is the last patient recovered from the COVID-19 coronavirus infection in the Wuhan pulmonary hospital. Picture: AFPSource:AFP
Director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the WHO said: “Knowing the source of the virus is very, very important. We can fight the virus better when we know everything about the virus, including how it started.”
The WHO team will see an animal health expert and an epidemiologist travel to China to “set up an international mission” to explore COVID-19’s origins.
EcoHealth Alliance president Dr Peter Daszak told The Telegraph: “Doing the science of this is hard, it’s expensive, it takes a long time. But it’s worth doing because then you can actually make intelligent decisions that will save lives in the future... and prevent another pandemic.”
He added that tracing the virus will be difficult because China is increasingly hostile and resistant to global criticism.
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