Baghdad The World Health Organization said today, Friday, that all countries should cooperate to find out the origin of the Coronavirus, a day after China rejected the proposed scope of the second stage of the investigation.

The WHO suggested this month to follow up on its previous investigations in China, but the vice-chairman of the National Health Committee of China, Cheng Yixin, said yesterday, Thursday, that Beijing “will not accept this proposal in its current form.”

When asked about China’s refusal, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told a Geneva news briefing: “It’s not about politics or who is to blame.”

He added, “It is mainly about a demand that we all have to try to understand how the pandemic reached humans, and in that sense countries have a responsibility to work together with the WHO in a spirit of partnership.”

A team led by the World Health Organization spent 4 weeks in and around Wuhan, China, with Chinese scientists and said in a joint report last March that “the virus was most likely transmitted from bats to humans through another animal, but further research is required.”

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the investigation was hampered by a lack of preliminary data on the early days of the outbreak there.

Countries, including the United States, are calling for further investigations, especially into the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was conducting research on bats.

Diplomats said China immediately expressed its opposition to the plan put forward by Tedros during closed-door talks with WTO members a week ago.

The first human cases of Covid-19 disease were recorded in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, and China has repeatedly denied the validity of theories that the virus leaked from one of its laboratories.

Source: National Iraqi News Agency