China rejects WHO's terms for more study of COVID-19's origins

Beijing — China cannot accept the World Health Organization's plan for the second phase of a study into the origins of COVID-19, a senior Chinese health official said Thursday.

Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of the National Health Commission, said he was "rather taken aback" by the call for a further look into the pandemic's origins and specifically, the theory that the virus might have leaked from a Chinese lab. He dismissed the lab leak theory as a rumor that runs counter to common sense and science.