Controversy around tracing the origins of COVID-19 "seems like a concerted effort by American political and media elites to divert attention from the amazing job China did in managing the initial outbreak," according to one professor.

Kenneth Hammond, a professor at New Mexico State University who specializes in Chinese history, said in a recent interview with Xinhua that the controversy is contrived to scapegoat China and avoid assuming political responsibility for America's public health failure.

DHAKA - COVID-19 origins tracing should be objective rather than politically motivated, Bangladeshi Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen told Xinhua in a recent exclusive interview.

"In the area of finding the origins and the causes, I think it should be left to the scientists," Momen said on the sidelines of the signing ceremony earlier this week of an agreement between Bangladesh and China on vaccine co-production.

"Sometimes, when there is a politically motivated investigation, that results in disaster," Momen noted, citing the unpopular U.S.-led Iraq war as an example.

There was first a political motivation, and then came an assessment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, with pictures and other false evidence, misleading the world into believing that it was true, he said.

"But eventually after they captured Iraq, they tried their best for more than two years to find an iota of that," he said.

Stressing that all countries need to work together to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic, Momen said the most important thing at this time is to have enough vaccines distributed to countries around the world, whether they are rich or poor.

"It is very sad that many rich countries ... have accumulated a lot of vaccines, and they are not sharing those with the poorer countries," he said.

"Vaccines should be a public good, and should be distributed to all countries without any discrimination," he said. "If everyone is not out of COVID, no one is out of COVID."

Momen expressed gratitude to the Chinese government and people for helping Bangladesh in the anti-pandemic fight.

"From the very beginning, they have been very supportive to us," he said, adding that Bangladesh-China relations have further deepened during the pandemic.

When China was having difficulty at the early days of the outbreak at home, Bangladesh sent medical equipment to China, and later when Bangladesh got into trouble, the Chinese government as well as private companies also offered much help to Bangladesh, he said.

"We are very lucky. We have a good friend like China," he added.

Political factors should not influence efforts to uncover the origins of COVID-19, said Lao Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh.

Politicizing origin tracing is inhumane, and scientists from all countries must work together to find out why the disease occurred in the first place, said the Lao Prime Minister when interviewed by Xinhua and other Chinese media here on Friday.

WASHINGTON - Results of scientific research and the related patent registration information have shown that Ralph Baric could be called the first person who synthesized a coronavirus.

Baric, a 67-year-old professor of epidemiology and microbiology and immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill), has been exploring the field of coronaviruses for more than 30 years and has his own lab.

He successfully created "an infectious clone of the urbani strain of the SARS coronavirus" by July 2003 at the US "Army's top bio-level three labs in Maryland," according to an article published by UNC-Chapel Hill in 2003.

Baric's team had synthetically reconstructed the bat variant of the SARS coronavirus (CoV) that caused the SARS epidemic in 2003, according to a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in 2008.

Meanwhile, his team owns multiple patents concerning synthesized viruses, according to the related US websites.

Baric co-owns a patent "Methods for Producing Recombinant Coronavirus", with Patent Number 7279327, according to justia.com.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Wednesday that the United States cares nothing about facts or truth, but only about how to exhaust and smear China by launching an investigation over the so-called "lab leak theory" that presumes China is guilty.

Zhao made the remark after media reports cited informed sources as saying that the US intelligence agency still intends to release a report that makes up misleading conclusions over the COVID-19 origins, despite the lack of concrete proof, and that high-level US officials believe the real purpose is to hype up the origin investigation with the aim of exhausting China's diplomatic resources and increasing US leverage regarding China.

The so-called "lab leak" conspiracy theory being hyped up by the United States against China is "totally groundless" and merely an attempt to cover up their incompetence in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, reported The Star newspaper of Malaysia.

In an article published on Tuesday, Lu Shiwei, Chinese consul general in Penang, Malaysia, pointed out that the United States is continuously and wantonly attacking China, politicizing the pandemic and stigmatizing the virus in a bid to shift responsibility for their botched pandemic response and achieve the political motive of discrediting and suppressing China.

Sending letters to the WHO director-general and issuing statements, around 70 countries have objected to the politicizing of COVID-19 origin-tracing and underscored their support for the WHO report on the virus, according to China's Foreign Ministry.

Kung Phoak, deputy secretary-general of ASEAN for ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community, said, "Much more politicized and stigmatized are the discourses on the origin of COVID-19, giving rise to hate crimes."

In a recently published opinion piece, the ASEAN official said "China has been cooperating with various countries and international organizations, such as the WHO, to address this pandemic", and he warned that "any politicization will undermine the whole purpose of saving all lives".

Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Wednesday that the United States cares nothing about facts or truth, but only about how to exhaust and smear China by launching an investigation over the so-called "lab leak theory" that presumes China is guilty.

Zhao made the remark after media reports cited informed sources as saying that the US intelligence agency still intends to release a report that makes up misleading conclusions over the COVID-19 origins, despite the lack of concrete proof, and that high-level US officials believe the real purpose is to hype up the origin investigation with the aim of exhausting China's diplomatic resources and increasing US leverage regarding China.

"If the media reports are true, the US report will be a statement of confession that shows that Washington is deliberately applying presumption of guilt," Zhao told reporters at a regular news briefing in Beijing.

According to the Global Times, Washington is ramping up pressure to coerce international scientists and to rope in allies and World Health Organization members to smear China over virus origins to beat the 90-day deadline for intelligence officials set by US President Joe Biden in May.

The newspaper said it was told by a source that the US administration will collude with the European Union, Australia and Japan to issue a statement on the second phase of investigation. The statement will urge the Chinese government to reflect on its decision to refuse to participate in the US-led second stage of the WHO virus origin tracing work and will call on China to "shoulder responsibility" and "take action", the source said.

The spokesman said that by going all out to smear China, the US is trying to deflect the international community's attention from Fort Detrick in the US and other bio labs it owns abroad.

"What is the US trying to hide?" Zhao said, urging the US to clear suspicion over these bio labs' relation to outbreaks of such diseases as plague, anthrax and Middle East respiratory syndrome.

The spokesman said that if the US has nothing to hide, it should invite the WHO to carry out a COVID-19 origins investigation in the US, particularly at Fort Detrick and the University of North Carolina.

World Health Organization (WHO) expert Dmitry Lvov has criticized politicization of tracing the coronavirus origins and recognized China's efforts in virus research.

In an interview with CGTN, the Russian virologist said he has no doubt of the virus' natural origins, and described those who spread the theory of coronavirus being man-made as "not experts, not professionals".

"What they are called are political scientists," Lvov told CGTN. "Our president Vladimir Putin said very aptly that now all political scientists have turned into virologists."

World Health Organization (WHO) expert Dmitry Lvov has criticized politicization of tracing the coronavirus origins and recognized China's efforts in virus research.

In an interview with CGTN, the Russian virologist said he has no doubt of the virus' natural origins, and described those who spread the theory of coronavirus being man-made as "not experts, not professionals".

"What they are called are political scientists," Lvov told CGTN. "Our president Vladimir Putin said very aptly that now all political scientists have turned into virologists."

As an expert working at the WHO, Lvov said: "I cannot answer for those actions and for those statements that come from the World Health Organization. There are also different people there, they are under great pressure, including, in my opinion, great pressure from the US."

He added: "The Americans are engaged in some works and attempt to suppress virologists like us from telling what is really happening. In fact, we know this much better than they [do]."

Lvov said he only deals with facts. He said he knew as a fact that the virus antibodies have been found in multiple cities around the world before the COVID-19 outbreak.

He recognized China had been a role model in containing the pandemic with many research institutes in the country able to analyze the virus in a fast fashion and share the results.

Global health watchdogs including the World Health Organization (WHO) should trace the origin of COVID-19 on scientific research and facts rather than politicizing the issue, said a Pakistani expert.

China has fully cooperated with the WHO during the first phase of the study to trace the virus, during which a clear conclusion that lab leak is extremely unlikely has been reached by the WHO-China joint expert team, said Mehmood Ul Hassan Khan, a regional geopolitical analyst from Islamabad-based think tank Center for Global and Strategic Studies.

"Right from the beginning, China has been very transparent, very open, very interactive, and has invited the WHO experts to come and see through their own eyes," he said.

There is no evidence that the novel coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic was created in a lab, and none of the lab leak claims "hold up to scientific scrutiny," a virologist with the University of Glasgow has said.

The lab leak theory "offers no evidence other than the circumstantial location of the Wuhan Institute of Virology," which is located in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei province, David Robertson, head of viral genomics and bioinformatics of the Scottish university, told Xinhua in an email interview recently.

VIENTIANE - Political factors should not influence efforts to uncover the origins of COVID-19, said Lao Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh.

Politicizing origin tracing is inhumane, and scientists from all countries must work together to find out why the disease occurred in the first place, said the Lao Prime Minister when interviewed by Xinhua and other Chinese media here on Friday.

"We need to know the facts so that we can solve the problem, and if we do not know the truth but just to shirk our responsibilities, we can not win over the fight against the disease," said Phankham.

The novel coronavirus has mutated into a variety of strains, with the Delta strain especially transmissible, Phankham said, noting that science and not politics should guide efforts to uncover the virus' origins and understand its mutations.

Phankham also reiterated a statement issued by the Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs on July 26, which called for "concerted and genuine cooperation and partnership among nations across the world."

The statement said politicizing the tracing of COVID-19's origins should be avoided, because such a complex matter requires objective, transparent, inclusive and purely science-based work.

State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on July 27 held talks with visiting Mongolian Foreign Minister Batmunkh Battsetseg in North China's port city of Tianjin.

The two sides welcomed the WHO-China joint report on the global tracing of COVID-19 origins, stressing that origin-tracing is a scientific work and should not be politicized.

They also called on the WHO Secretariat to cooperate with member states in accordance with relevant resolutions of the World Health Assembly to promote global origin tracing research.

The World Health Organization (WHO)'s proposal, under the pressure of the United States, to conduct a second-phase COVID-19 origin tracing in China is politicized, said Ali El-Hefny, Egypt's former ambassador to China and former deputy foreign minister.

The push for a second probe targeting China "is aimed at what the US and the West were unable to do" in the first round of the WHO investigation, the veteran diplomat told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Any politicization of COVID-19 origin tracing should be resisted, Maltese Foreign Minister Evarist Bartolo has said.

"For us, at the moment, definitely, the enemy should be the pandemic, not each other," said Bartolo in a recent exclusive interview with Xinhua.

"This is a health crisis where if not all the world is safe, no country will be safe," he said.

Almost 60 countries have sent letters to the World Health Organization agreeing with the results of the first phase of origin-tracing research and opposing the attempts to politicize the issue.

Finland understands China's concerns over the COVID-19 origin-tracing issue and advocates that origin tracing should be conducted scientifically, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said during his talks with Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Chengdu on July 25.