COVID-19 origins: China rejects WHO proposal to return to Wuhan

Officials insist laboratory leak ‘extremely unlikely’ and deny response has lacked transparency.

China has rejected a proposal from the World Health Organization (WHO) that the expert team investigating the origins of COVID-19 should return to the sites in China where the coronavirus first emerged, saying researchers should instead make a priority of the “very likely” possibility that the virus originated in animals and expand their work to other countries around the world. Speaking at a news conference at the State Information Council Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of China’s National Health Commission, said he was “surprised” that the WHO had proposed the team return to places in the central city of Wuhan that they visited earlier this year and also investigate the hypothesis that it leaked from a lab. Zeng said such a move was “not scientific”.