UN envoy: 'Political manipulation' won't defeat pandemic

A Chinese envoy to the United Nations on Wednesday rejected "false information" from the United States on the coronavirus' origin, saying that "political manipulation is unpopular, cannot defeat the pandemic and is doomed to failure".

"The US representative once again abused the UN platform today and used the issue of virus origin-tracing in political manipulation, which is completely inconsistent with the original intention of the meeting. China firmly opposes this," Dai Bing, chargé d'affaires of the Permanent Mission of China to the UN, said in an informal meeting of the General Assembly on the findings and recommendations of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR).

China has been "actively participating in international traceability cooperation" and has twice invited experts from the World Health Organization to China to conduct research on this issue, said Dai.

"The WHO experts went wherever they wanted to go, met all the people they wanted to meet. They made a scientific conclusion that 'a laboratory leak is extremely unlikely' and put forward important suggestions such as 'searching for possible early cases on a global scale', which has been widely recognized by the international community," the envoy pointed out.

The next stage of traceability should be continued on that basis, and various early cases have been discovered in many countries around the world, Dai said.

The envoy said that the US "deviated from science and facts. The country politicized and stigmatized the issue of traceability in order to shift its responsibility for its ineffective fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

"To achieve its political purpose of discrediting and suppressing other countries, the US has been completely lost by spreading false information and lies," said Dai. "The US has lost its bottom line of scientific ethics."

In fact, said Dai, the second-stage traceability work plan proposed by the WHO Secretariat has been severely politicized, and many countries have expressed serious concerns and opposition to this.

"China is willing to uphold the spirit of openness, transparency, science and cooperation. China supports promoting the traceability research cooperation in many countries around the world on the basis of full consultation among member states," said Dai.

However, "the source of the political virus must also be traced", the envoy said. "We urge the US to respect science, save lives, stop disrupting international anti-epidemic cooperation and virus traceability cooperation."

"We urge the US to welcome WHO experts to come to the US to conduct traceability research in an open, transparent and cooperative manner," said Dai.