Biden orders investigation into origins of coronavirus

US President Joe Biden has ordered the country's intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of the coronavirus. The US has accused China of controlling and restricting the World Health Organization's investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.

United States President Joe Biden ordered the country's security agencies to find the source of the coronavirus pandemic.

A statement issued by the US President's Office stated that the investigations conducted so far have presented different estimates, but have not reached a clear conclusion. For this reason, US intelligence agencies should intensify their efforts and prepare another report on this within 90 days.

According to Joe Biden, the possibility of the accidental release of the coronavirus from a laboratory in China is considered likely, at least in parts of the US security apparatus. This was an accusation that former US President Donald Trump had made against China.

The Wall Street Journal has once again raised this possibility in a report.

The result of negligence?

The coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019. There was long-standing speculation that the virus had escaped from a virology center in Wuhan, possibly by accident. No evidence has been provided to support this speculation.

Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have repeatedly claimed that the coronavirus originated in a laboratory. Trump spoke of the possibility of a “terrible mistake” and said: “It was probably incompetence and the work of a fool.”

But neither he nor any members of his government have been able to provide evidence for this claim, and China has also strongly denied the accusation.

The Chinese government also denied a Wall Street Journal report in recent days, citing US security sources, that three scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell seriously ill and were hospitalized in November 2019.

In his announcement, Biden criticized the fact that American investigators were unable to access the necessary documents to conduct investigations in the first months of the pandemic, during Trump's presidency, and considered this "shortcoming" to be the reason for preventing any investigation.

US doubts World Health Organization report

There has also been an international effort to find the origin of the coronavirus. In March, the World Health Organization published the results of a study that suggested that the coronavirus could have originated from other scaly mammals (pangolins) in addition to bats.

The theory of the laboratory origin of the coronavirus was assessed by researchers from this group as "highly unlikely."

The United States, however, has questioned the quality of the research and called for further investigations. The United States accuses China of having undue and excessive influence over the international researchers who conducted the research.

According to the US, Beijing has tightly controlled and restricted this research, and the scientists who conducted it have not had access to all the original evidence and laboratory samples.

After months of delays by Beijing, international experts were able to travel to Wuhan earlier this year to conduct this investigation.

Source: DW