Beijing. November 1st. INTERFAX - The conclusions about the origin of the coronavirus contained in the declassified report of the American intelligence community are unreliable and unscientific, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.
The report released last Saturday says that although the US intelligence community has not come to a consensus, it still considers two hypotheses of the origin of COVID-19 likely: infection through an animal and "an incident related to the work of a laboratory (in Wuhan, China)."
It also says that "China's assistance will be necessary to achieve a final assessment of the origin of the virus."
"However, Beijing continues to obstruct the investigation, refuses to disclose information and blames other countries, including the United States," the report emphasizes.
In this regard, Wang Wenbin stated: "A lie repeated a thousand times is still a lie. No matter how many times this report is published or how many versions it is concocted from, it will not change the nature of detailed political and false reports that have no scientific basis or credibility."
He noted that the study of the origin of the virus "is a serious and complex scientific problem, and research should and can only be carried out by scientists around the world on the basis of international cooperation."
According to the diplomat, the American side is "obsessed with political manipulation", this can only harm global scientific cooperation in the fight against epidemics and lead to even greater human casualties.
Infection with the COVID-19 coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in Hubei province at the end of 2019, then it began to spread worldwide. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a coronavirus pandemic.
Most scientists initially believed that COVID-19 was a virus of zoonotic origin. It is assumed that it could be transmitted to humans from bats. To determine the source of the coronavirus, WHO has initiated a special investigation. To this end, in early February 2021, a group of WHO experts visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology and, following the results of the visit, concluded that the leakage of viruses from the institute's laboratory is "extremely unlikely." Many Western countries did not agree with the results of this investigation.