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U.S. should be open, transparent on COVID-19 origins tracing: expert
CGTN
The bio-level 3 and 4 research lab at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, September 26, 2002. /CFP

The bio-level 3 and 4 research lab at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, September 26, 2002. /CFP

Using intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of the novel coronavirus represents the U.S.'s usual anti-China obsession, said Eduardo Klinger Pevida, a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Dominican Republic.

In an op-ed published in the Dominican daily Hoy on August 30, Pevida wrote that U.S. intelligence agencies had found no evidence that the novel coronavirus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. "Strictly speaking, they concluded that there was no such escape," Pevida said.

However, the U.S. turned a deaf ear to the concerns raised by China about other possible outbreaks caused by the coronavirus, the expert wrote.

He said that suspicious outbreaks of lung disease with symptoms similar to COVID-19 took place in mid-2019 in the vicinity of Fort Detrick, where the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID), a major army biological warfare facility, is located.

There were other cases with COVID-19-like symptoms in Wisconsin that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attributed to e-cigarettes. 

"But, demanding much transparency from others, they refuse to be investigated internationally and the World Health Organization (WHO) leadership, fearful of being again accused of being 'China-centered,' does not pay attention," said Pevida.

Pevida noted that the U.S. and the WHO must maintain impartiality and conduct investigations in places like Fort Detrick, which has been questioned by all levels of the international community.

"If the WHO's concern is honest and it wants to detect any outbreak of the coronavirus, it should show impartiality and require Washington to be 'open and transparent,'" he wrote, adding that it is not new for the U.S. to use biological weapons.

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