China urges the U.S. to stop shirking its responsibility and invite World Health Organization (WHO) experts to conduct origins-tracing studies as soon as possible, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said during a press briefing on Tuesday. 

Days before, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) updated dashboard showed that the country's first deaths related to COVID-19 dated back to January 2020, weeks earlier than previously reported. Multiple pieces of research also suggest the presence of the virus in the country much earlier than previously known, in some cases even earlier than the first cases reported in China.