{"id":97977,"date":"2021-08-28T07:03:15","date_gmt":"2021-08-28T12:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=97977"},"modified":"2021-08-28T07:03:15","modified_gmt":"2021-08-28T12:03:15","slug":"biden-says-china-still-withholding-critical-info-on-covid-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2021\/08\/28\/biden-says-china-still-withholding-critical-info-on-covid-origins\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden Says China Still Withholding \u2018Critical\u2019 Info on COVID Origins"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"VOA \u2014 WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden said Friday that China was withholding \u201ccritical information\u201d on the origins of COVID-19 after the U.S. intelligence community said it did not believe the virus was a bioweapon \u2014 but remained split on whether it escaped from a lab.<\/p>\n

The United States, however, does not believe Chinese officials had foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of the pandemic that has now claimed 4.5 million lives, according to the unclassified summary of an eagerly awaited intelligence report.<\/p>\n

\u201cCritical information about the origins of this pandemic exists in the People\u2019s Republic of China, yet from the beginning, government officials in China have worked to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community from accessing it,\u201d Biden said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo this day, the PRC continues to reject calls for transparency and withhold information, even as the toll of this pandemic continues to rise.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. intelligence has ruled out that the coronavirus was developed as a weapon, and most agencies assess with \u201clow confidence\u201d it was not genetically engineered.<\/p>\n

But the community remains divided on the pathogen\u2019s origins, with four agencies and the National Intelligence Council judging in favor of natural exposure to an animal as the likely explanation, and one agency favoring the lab leak theory.<\/p>\n

Analysts at three agencies were unable to reach a conclusion.<\/p>\n

\u201cVariations in analytic views largely stem from differences in how agencies weigh intelligence reporting and scientific publications, and intelligence and scientific gaps,\u201d the summary said.<\/p>\n

The intelligence community and global scientists lack clinical samples or epidemiological data from the earliest COVID-19 cases, it added.<\/p>\n

Biden said the United States would continue to work with allies to press Beijing to share more information and cooperate with the World Health Organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must have a full and transparent accounting of this global tragedy. Nothing less is acceptable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The office of the director of national intelligence said it was reviewing declassifying parts of the report in the near future, in light of the historic nature of the pandemic and the importance of informing the public, while protecting its sources and methods.<\/p>\n

Lab leak fading<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beijing has rejected calls from the United States and other countries for a renewed origin probe after a heavily politicized visit by a WHO team in January also proved inconclusive and faced criticism for lacking transparency and access.<\/p>\n

In a statement Friday, the Chinese embassy in Washington slammed the U.S. intelligence community\u2019s findings, defending its handling of the pandemic and the WHO investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe report by the U.S. intelligence community shows that the U.S. is bent on going down the wrong path of political manipulation,\u201d the embassy said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe report by the intelligence community is based on the presumption of guilt on the part of China, and it is only for scapegoating China.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the outset of the pandemic, the natural origin hypothesis \u2014 that the virus emerged in bats and then passed to humans, likely via an intermediary species \u2014 was widely accepted.<\/p>\n

But as time wore on and scientists were unable to find a virus in either bats or another animal that matches the genetic signature of SARS-CoV-2, investigators said they were more open to considering a leak involving the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which carried out bat coronavirus research.<\/p>\n

Recent scientific papers, however, are tilting the debate back towards a zoonotic origin.<\/p>\n

Researchers in China and the University of Glasgow published a paper in the journal Science <\/em>that found \u201canimal-to-human transmission associated with infected live animals is the most likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, a paper by 21 top virologists in the journal Cell <\/em>bluntly concluded: \u201cThere is currently no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 has a laboratory origin.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA \u2014 WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden said Friday that China was withholding \u201ccritical information\u201d on the origins of COVID-19 after the U.S. intelligence community said it did not believe the virus was a bioweapon \u2014 but remained split on whether it escaped from a lab. The United States, however, does not believe Chinese officials […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97978,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97977"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97980,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97977\/revisions\/97980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}