China's Most Direct Pushback To Probe On Corona Origin

The Wuhan laboratory at the center of the controversy "never had the virus," said Liang Wannian, an epidemiologist who headed the team of Chinese experts working with the WHO.

China pushed back against the World Health Organization's call for another probe into the coronavirus's origins that includes examining whether it leaked from a lab, saying there's no evidence for the theory and it defies common sense. The pathogen most likely arose in an animal, which transmitted it to humans via an intermediate host, a group of top Chinese science officials insisted at a briefing in Beijing on Thursday. They praised an earlier report from the WHO that pointed primarily to animals, while finding that the lab leak hypothesis was "extremely impossible." The Wuhan laboratory at the center of the controversy "never had the virus," said Liang Wannian, an epidemiologist who headed the team of Chinese experts working with the WHO. "There's no need for us to put more resources into a lab leak probe." The hypothesis was once dismissed as a conspiracy theory by opponents of former U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration raised the possibility ahead of the 2020 election. The premise subsequently gained traction as scientists questioned China's reluctance to provide access to primary source material, attention grew over efforts among some virologists to make viruses stronger, called "gain of function" work, and some world leaders called for a deeper probe.