As U.S.-led Western countries reportedly try to piece together a report accusing lab staff at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) of leaking COVID-19, China has been addressing and clarifying rumors.

Head of the lab and a researcher at the WIV, Yuan Zhiming, explained the reason behind the shutdown of a public webpage showing the lab's virus database at a recent press conference about COVID-19 origins tracing.

He told a Reuters reporter that the database was taken down because of "a large number of malicious attacks on the institute's website."

Yuan added that the attacks also targeted work and personal email addresses of many WIV staff, resulting in the shutdown of public access to the database. The virus database is now only open to WIV insiders.

Read more: How safe is the biolab in WIV?

The culprit behind the cyberattacks was not mentioned at the press conference and the WIV didn't disclose a specific date to make the database available to the public again.

"It is the usual practice that the original data of scientific research is published in the form of papers after being analyzed and collated and the database will then be opened to the public," Yuan said, indicating that the data will be made available along with WIV research papers.

In addition to the explanation, Yuan also highlighted WIV's internal policy of timely sharing research information. He listed examples such as the sequencing of the novel coronavirus and submission of the information to the World Health Organization (WHO), staff researcher Shi Zhengli publishing a paper in Nature in early February saying that COVID-19 came from nature, and WIV taking "part in international video and audio academic conferences" organized by people from the WHO, the U.S., France and Russia.

"In the meantime, we have invited biosafety experts from France, the U.S., Germany, the UK and Canada to our labs," Yuan said. "And they provided on-site guidance and exchanged experience with us, so as to jointly promote the safe and stable operation of high-containment laboratories around the world."