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Coronavirus pandemic
ChinaDiplomacy

China fires back after White House site pushes Covid-19 ‘lab leak’ theory

China accuses Washington of fabricating theory that coronavirus came from Wuhan laboratory, suggests it came from US instead

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A revamped White House website about Covid-19, shown here on Friday, displays a photo of US President Donald Trump walking between the words “lab” and “leak”. Photo: Whitehouse.gov
Hayley Wongin Beijing

China’s National Health Commission (NHC) on Wednesday accused the US of fabricating the idea that the coronavirus came from a Wuhan laboratory – a theory it said had “no scientific basis”.

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“More and more clues and evidence showed an earlier appearance of Covid-19 in the United States,” the commission said after the White House pushed the Wuhan lab source theory in a revamped website about the origins of Covid-19.

“The next step of tracing the origin should be carried out in the United States, and we urge the US side to immediately stop smearing and attacking China, face its own problems, and give a serious and responsible explanation to the international community,” it said in a statement to state news agency Xinhua.

US President Donald Trump’s administration updated its Covid-19 website last week – five years after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the pandemic. The website now displays a banner with the words “lab leak” and shows a photo of Trump walking between the two words.

According to the Trump site, the virus has a “biological characteristic that is not found in nature” and originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in central China, which has “inadequate biosafety levels”.

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In the strongly worded statement, the NHC said the website was “just like the previous, repeated hyping of the ‘Wuhan laboratory leak’ [theory]”, which reflected the “sinister character of the US in politicising scientific issues”.

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