Politics won't give us facts of coronavirus origins

Editor's note: Ikenna Emewu is a journalist and editor-in-chief of Africa China Economy Magazine, Nigeria. His primary research interests are China's international relations and "socialism with Chinese characteristics." The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

COVID-19 was one of the most strenuous global-scale health challenges that has confronted humanity in the past century.

When it broke out, some U.S. politicians never disappoint in their traditional, terse verbiage to malign China. They gave wings to bloated biases and hate against China to fly at the outbreak of COVID-19. Initially, the common notion was that coronavirus cases were first reported in China, but later research proved otherwise. Even after the facts of earlier infections, like those found right in California, were appropriately confirmed, the rumors continued to spread.

Even in the post-pandemic era, the remnants of his bias against China over the origins of COVID-19 continued to linger in Washington. Despite growing evidence to the contrary, the narrative linking China to sole responsibility for the pandemic's emergence remains prevalent in political discourse.

The U.S. went as far as pulling itself out of the World Health Organization (WHO), alleging that the agency connived with China to release a false report to cover the "real" facts.

The refashioned fallacy has begun to sound like the weaponization of the coronavirus' origins. There is no doubt that politics has been introduced into the efforts to trace how the coronavirus came to ravage humanity, rather than relying on facts and science. The politics of this effort is the insistence that the origins tracing must be in China, and repeatedly so.

Since it has been established that there were cases of COVID-19 in France and the U.S. before the major outbreak in Wuhan, there is no scientific harm in expanding the search to other countries beyond China.

Arising from this finding, the WHO, through its then spokesperson Christian Lindmeier, called on countries to check their records for similar cases. There was a finding in California that a coronavirus-related death was recorded in the U.S. almost a month earlier than previously thought.

Given these facts, why must all searches for the origins of COVID-19 start and stop in China?

No records available to the reading public suggest China acted in any suspicious manner toward sincere actions against the pandemic. At the beginning of the battle, the WHO commended China for its efforts and cooperation when it landed in the country to work with local experts.

The WHO's initial report from the joint research of February 16 to 20, 2020, conducted by experts from the U.S. and some European countries, was specific that "COVID-19 is a zoonotic virus. From phylogenetics analyses undertaken with available full genome sequences, bats appear to be the reservoir of the COVID-19 virus, but the intermediate host(s) have not yet been identified." To this day, the intermediate host remains unknown.

Acknowledging China's openness and efficacy in handling the outbreak, the WHO said: "In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history … Achieving China's exceptional coverage with and adherence to these containment measures has only been possible due to the deep commitment of the Chinese people."

On March 30, 2021, the WHO released a report by a team of international researchers who had traveled to China, confirming the earlier position that the origins are not linked to any lab leak.

This report was compiled by a team of experts from 10 countries, including the U.S., Australia, the UK and Japan, who worked with local Chinese experts for 28 days. Their report explicitly stated that a lab leakage was impossible, with suggestions that origin tracing studies should be conducted in other parts of the world.

As the pandemic situation continued to evolve, China has made scientific, timely and necessary adjustments to its COVID-19 prevention and control measures. China's strong public health interventions helped ease the global burden of pandemic response, bought valuable time for the international community and provided useful insights for other countries.

When humanity faces a global public health crisis like COVID-19, everything within human reach – science, faith, research, cooperation, charity and diplomacy – should be spared. At a time when the world is shrouded in the shadow of a global crisis, certain countries attempting to pursue their own political agendas are not only futile but also undermine international solidarity and mutual trust. Ultimately, such actions jeopardize the shared health, well-being and long-term development of all humankind.

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