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January 4 (PTI): China on Monday vehemently refuted the US charge that the novel coronavirus was leaked from a bio lab in the country and asserted that the pandemic was likely to have been caused by separate outbreaks in multiple places in the world.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying's remarks came amidst reports that a ten-member team of the World Health Organisation scientists would visit China this month to probe the origin of the coronavirus, which emerged in Wuhan in December 2019.
Beijing is yet to confirm the visit by the WHO team and remained silent about granting permission for it to visit Wuhan city in central China.
"I have no detailed information for you," Hua told a media briefing here when asked about the visit of the WHO team and whether its schedule included a visit to Wuhan.
"China attaches high importance to cooperation with the WHO. We have been providing support and convenience for WHO's work," Hua said.
China has been proactively questioning the widely-held view that the deadly outbreak broke out in a wet market in Wuhan where the live animals are sold. The market remained closed and sealed since early last year.
In May last year, the World Health Assembly - the governing body of the 194-member states of the WHO - approved a resolution to set up an independent inquiry to conduct an "impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation" of the international response as well as that of WHO.
It also asked the WHO to investigate the "source of the virus and the route of introduction to the human population".
"We raced against time and were the first country to report cases to the world," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in interviews to the official media over the weekend.
"More and more research suggests that the pandemic was likely to have been caused by separate outbreaks in multiple places in the world," he said.
"When hit by an unknown coronavirus, China took immediate actions to carry out epidemiological investigation, identify the pathogen and publicise key information including the genome sequencing of the virus. All this sounded alarm bells across the world," Wang said, adding that China "took the most rigorous control measures to fight the virus".
