India / India comments on WHO's COVID-19 origin study, calls it 'important first step'

Washington: India on Friday backed calls for further investigations into the origin of Covid-19 and sought the cooperation of China and other parties for such studies, days after US President Joe Biden asked intelligence agencies to submit a fresh report on the issue.

Biden’s directive to the US intelligence community to redouble their efforts to collect information to facilitate a definitive conclusion on the origin of the Coronavirus has angered China, which said on Thursday that the US is playing politics. China again dismissed the theory that the virus could have leaked from a laboratory.

External affairs ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the World Health Organization (WHO)-led study was an “important first step”, but more studies were needed to reach “robust conclusions”.

“The WHO convened global study on the origin of Covid-19 is an important first step. It stressed the need for next phase studies as also for further data and studies to reach robust conclusions,” Bagchi said in a statement.

Without naming China, he added, “The follow up of the WHO report and further studies deserve the understanding and cooperation of all.”

A WHO-led team that spent four weeks in and around Wuhan in January and February said in a report issued in March that the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal, and that “introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway”.

WHO is currently reviewing the recommendations in this report to prepare a proposal for director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on the next studies to be carried out.

In March, Biden had task the US intelligence community to prepare a report on the origin of Covid-19, including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a “laboratory accident”. Biden said on Wednesday that he had received the report earlier this month and asked for an additional follow-up as the intelligence community had “coalesced around two likely scenarios” but hadn’t reached a definitive conclusion.

Biden asked the intelligence community to “redouble their efforts to collect and analyse information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, and to report back to me in 90 days”.

As part of this follow up, Biden outlined “areas of further inquiry that may be required, including specific questions for China”. He said the US will work with like-minded partners around the world to “press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence”.

On Thursday, China’s foreign ministry responded to Biden’s move by saying the US was playing politics as the WHO study had concluded the “lab leak” theory was unlikely. Foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian also dismissed this theory as a conspiracy.

“Some people in the US completely ignore facts and science,” Zhao said.