ROME - Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Saturday that an objective, scientific, and responsible attitude should be adopted for tracing the origins of COVID-19.

During his meeting with Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Wang said vigilance against all kinds of political hype is needed while tracing the origins of COVID-19, and all member states should be treated equally and the sovereignty of each country earnestly respected.

China is willing to discuss future cooperation with the WHO on this basis, he added.

For more than a year, Wang said, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, the Chinese people have fought a people's war against the pandemic and made major strategic achievements.

He said that while handling its own affairs well, China has always upheld the concept of a community of common health for mankind and at a time when the world was in dire need of help, China overcame its own difficulties and carried out the largest emergency humanitarian operation since the founding of the People's Republic of China to help countries meet their pressing needs.

China has given full play to its advantages, demonstrated its responsibility, and made due contribution during the global fight against the pandemic, he added.

Wang said that China attaches great importance to the role of the WHO, which is the key agency for the global fight against the pandemic, stands ready to strengthen cooperation with the organization in promoting the fair distribution of vaccines, the research and development of new anti-virus drugs, and supporting African countries in their anti-pandemic fight, and has contributed positive energy to the global anti-pandemic cooperation.

Wang said that solidarity is the most powerful weapon in the fight against the pandemic, which is a major test for multilateralism.

He expressed the hope that the WHO will adhere to a scientific attitude and put people's lives and health first, maintain solidarity and cooperation, as well as oppose moves of politicization, labelling and stigmatization under the pretext of anti-pandemic fight.

Describing COVID-19 as a common enemy facing the world, Tedros said that the WHO appreciates China's adherence to the spirit of solidarity and its offer of help and support to countries during the anti-pandemic fight.

He added that the WHO also appreciates China's support for and participation in COVAX, as well as its active contribution to the equitable distribution of vaccines.

Tedros noted that the WHO has always adhered to principles, refused to succumb to external political pressure, unswervingly opposed scapegoating others and shirking responsibility, firmly resisted politicization of anti-pandemic efforts, and continues to carry out research on the origins of COVID-19 with a scientific attitude.

OTTAWA - The theory that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was created in a lab remains unlikely, a Canadian virologist has said in a recent episode of CANADALAND podcasts.

"There is no way" that RaTG13, a coronavirus discovered years earlier in a mine in China's Yunnan Province, is a possible progenitor of SARS-CoV-2, said Angela Rasmussen, the University of Saskatchewan virologist, adding that the 4 percent difference between the two viruses is huge, which means that a virus would have had to acquire over 1,000 different mutations scattered throughout the genome randomly to become another.

Meanwhile, it is challenging and "technically very difficult" for somebody to insert over 1,000 point mutations into the genome of a progenitor virus, she added.

"It is a conspiracy theory that we have no basis in evidence for," she said, referring to the hypothesis that the Wuhan Institute of Virology could have been keeping a virus that was closer to SARS-CoV-2.

Rasmussen said a zoonotic origin remains the most likely source for the virus that causes COVID-19.

MOSCOW - A new French study has dismissed a cave in Mojiang County, Southwest China's Yunnan province as an origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The study, published online on the journal Environmental Research in late September, also rebuts lab-leak speculations that link the virus to several miners working in the county in 2012.

A retrospective analysis of their clinical reports showed that the miners had displayed symptoms very different from those shown by COVID-19 patients, Sputnik news agency reported.

"One must also wonder why a virus which killed more than 5 million and infected more than 200 million in 18 months did not cause any illness in 7 years from 2012 to 2019," the study read.

"Dismissing the Mojiang mine theory leaves the laboratory leak narrative without any scientific support thus making it simply an opinion-based narrative," it added.

LOS ANGELES - Despite mounting evidence that the COVID-19 reached humans through natural pathways, some mainstream US media organizations still pushed pseudoscience on the virus' origins, said an article in the Los Angeles Times.

In the column published on Sept 29, Michael A. Hiltzik, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, listed CNN, investigative news site the Intercept, and the Atlantic among such organizations, saying they downplayed or entirely ignored the latest scientific findings that support zoonotic theory and the view accepted by a preponderance of experts in virology.

In an hourlong documentary entitled "The Origins of COVID-19: Searching for the Source" aired on Sept 19 by CNN, both proponents of the zoonotic origin theory and supporters of the lab-leak theory had their times, but the former came from prominent virologic researchers and the latter had not any experience in this field.

"By posing these two theories as simply two equally plausible solutions to a mystery, CNN glosses over the fact that the virological community regards the animal origin as vastly more likely than a lab leak. In fact, the two hypotheses are miles apart in credibility," Hiltzik wrote.

Moreover, the 50-years-old news veteran noticed "much of the rest of the CNN program is filled with speculation about the Wuhan Institute, typically presented with portentous music on the soundtrack, suggesting subliminally that something sinister is going on there."

The reports from the Intercept and the Atlantic had similar intention and should not be trusted, he said, "by pretending that the debate itself is important, as if both sides have something to offer, they manage to report on a claim that has no substance."

Hiltzik concluded in this debate that the zoonotic camp had evidence and the lab-leak camp nothing to offer but innuendo.

"There is no evidence that the Wuhan lab was working with a bat virus that had anything but a very distant resemblance to SARS-CoV-2," he wrote.

Xinhua

In his article published on Wednesday in the Tanzanian newspaper The Citizen, Humphrey Moshi, professor of economics and director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam, said the United States using its intelligence services to investigate the origins of the coronavirus has resulted in stigmatization, scapegoating, finger pointing and misconception due to "the high-level politicization of the exercise." (Read more)

As for COVID-19 origins-tracing, "it is actually the US that is not being transparent, responsible and cooperative on this issue," Chinese Ambassador to Indonesia Xiao Qian wrote in a recent editorial in the Jakarta Post.(Read more)

Raphael Tuju, secretary-general of Kenya's ruling Jubilee Party, said any attempt to investigate the origins of the virus should be informed by scientific analysis and data as opposed to partisan geopolitics. (Read more)

A study of big data and epidemic models indicates with 50 percent probability that the first COVID-19 infection in the United States may have occurred between August and October 2019, and the earliest possible case was on April 26, 2019, in Rhode Island, according to a preprint of a study published on Wednesday.

The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, is published on the Chinese preprint server ChinaXiv and is still undergoing peer-review.

After analyzing daily epidemic data published by local health authorities from 11 US states and the District of Columbia, the researchers said they are 50 percent confident that the first COVID-19 cases in the US emerged between August and October 2019, considerably earlier than the currently acknowledged date of the first confirmed US case, on Jan 20, 2020.

"The calculations show that the COVID-19 epidemic in the United States has a high probability of beginning to spread around September 2019," according to the paper.

The 11 states are New Jersey, Vermont, Virginia, Michigan, New Hampshire, Louisiana, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, Delaware and Rhode Island.

"A series of previous studies showed that the United States, Spain, France, Italy, Brazil and other countries had been attacked by the coronavirus before its outbreak in China," the researchers wrote.

Last week, a team of Laotian and French researchers published a preprint study saying they had discovered three coronaviruses found in horseshoe bats that live in northern Laotian limestone caves that are the closest known ancestors yet of the COVID-19 virus.

These viruses share a key feature with SARS-CoV-2 in the part of its genome known as the receptor binding domain, a region that allows it to latch onto cells. This research supports the hypothesis that the COVID-19 virus originated from the horseshoe bat species.

Last month, researchers from the University of Milan and the Italian National Institute of Health reported that a different version of the COVID-19 virus may have been circulating in Lombardy, northern Italy, as early as late summer 2019.

The Italian preprint study suggested that a wider geographical area and a broader time span should be considered when investigating the origins of the virus.

The US intelligence agency's report on the origins of COVID-19 is misleading and can be cited as a showcase for politicizing scientific issues, a senior Ethiopian ruling party official has said.

In a recent interview with Xinhua, Bikila Hurisa, head of Ethiopia's ruling Prosperity Party's public and international relations, said the origins tracing of COVID-19 should be left to neutral and professional researchers, dismissing the matter as a non-intelligence issue.

"COVID-19 origin(s) tracing is a scientific endeavor and process. Let the world's scientific researchers come together, stand independently and conduct an in-depth scientific investigation to find out the real origins of COVID-19," he said.

More Asian countries are voicing their opposition to efforts by some outside the region to politicize studies into the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19. And influential figures in those countries have joined in the condemnation, while also calling for stepped-up efforts against the pandemic.

There should be no politicizing of the issue, Sri Lanka's Foreign Ministry said in a statement last week. The ministry said scientific and evidence-based methods must be used in the efforts to trace the origins of the virus.

"Multilateralism and international cooperation provide the best possible means to effectively and sustainably defeat the pandemic," it said. "It is equally important to conduct a comprehensive, inclusive, and impartial study on the origin of the virus."

More Asian countries are voicing their opposition to efforts by some outside the region to politicize studies into the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19. And influential figures in those countries have joined in the condemnation, while also calling for stepped-up efforts against the pandemic.

There should be no politicizing of the issue, Sri Lanka's Foreign Ministry said in a statement last week. The ministry said scientific and evidence-based methods must be used in the efforts to trace the origins of the virus.

"Multilateralism and international cooperation provide the best possible means to effectively and sustainably defeat the pandemic," it said. "It is equally important to conduct a comprehensive, inclusive, and impartial study on the origin of the virus."

Experts from around the world say politically-driven attempts by the United States and its allies regarding COVID-19 origins tracing are hindering global efforts to fight the disease.

Politicizing origins tracing disrespects science, endangers human lives and undermines efforts to end the pandemic, said the experts at a webinar organized by the Friends of BRI Forum, a Pakistan-based think tank, on Friday.

Experts from around the world say politically-driven attempts by the United States and its allies regarding COVID-19 origins tracing are hindering global efforts to fight the disease.

Henry Chan, visiting senior research fellow at the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, said that "the virus has no passport, and it does not understand human language, so we need to only rely on science to understand the origins of the virus."

Politicizing origins tracing has disastrous consequences for humanity, Chan said, adding that a collective approach to fighting the crisis instead of pointing fingers is needed.

Experts from around the world say politically-driven attempts by the United States and its allies regarding COVID-19 origins tracing are hindering global efforts to fight the disease.

Speaking on the occasion, President of Association for Sri Lanka-China Social and Cultural Cooperation Indrananda Abeysekera said that politicization runs counter to global peace.

"Our stand should not be against any country but against the politicization of the virus," he said. "China has set a great example for international cooperation."

It is a great irony that while the United States blames China for the coronavirus and tries to play up the lab leak theory, it has refused to allow investigations into its biowarfare activities which potentially pose a danger to the world, wrote a senior editor with the South African news and information website Independent Online (IOL).

Shannon Ebrahim, group foreign editor for Independent Media which own the IOL, said in an opinion article recently that the World Health Organization (WHO) released a joint WHO-China study on the origins of COVID-19, which found that a leak from the Wuhan laboratory was highly unlikely.

HAVANA - The Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) has condemned attempts by the United States to manipulate the origins tracing of COVID-19 for political gains, according to a statement published Friday on the PCC's website.

The so-called report on the origins of COVID-19 compiled by the US intelligence community recently politicizes, stigmatizes, and singularizes COVID-19 origins, Juan Carlos Marsan Aguilera, deputy head of the International Relations Department of the PCC Central Committee, was quoted as saying.

During an online meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum (FSP) held Thursday, the official said, "the US intention to blame the People's Republic of China for the origins of the virus is another attempt by the North American nation to manipulate the COVID-19 crisis to benefit their political interests."

He said the US report lacks scientific evidence and clarity, adding the joint report on origins tracing done by the World Health Organization and Chinese scientists in early 2021 has laid out scientific, professional and authorized conclusions.

A declaration issued on Thursday after the meeting highlighted "China's efforts to provide vaccines to various countries, including Latin America, as an important contribution to global cooperation in the fight against pandemics."

"The virus knows no borders or nations. Only with the solidarity of the entire international community can we be victorious against the virus," the declaration said.

"The union of all countries, respecting international solidarity and cooperation, is fundamental at this time to be victorious in the face of the pandemic and overcome this difficult moment in our history, laying the foundations for a better future for all humanity," it added. 

A Nigerian virologist said COVID-19 origins tracing should not be politicized but be based on concrete scientific evidence.

Oyewole Tomori, chairman of Nigeria's Expert Review Committee on COVID-19, told media that it would be difficult to specify the origins of the coronavirus, local daily the Leadership reported.

The lab leak theory has been dismissed by most mainstream scientists as "a fringe conspiracy theory" being promoted by the US government, said Tomori.