China says Covid data already shared as WHO calls for transparency

The Chinese government on Tuesday said that it has shared the most Covid-19 data and research findings with the international community and stressed that investigations into the origins of coronavirus should be conducted in other countries as well.

Beijing's remarks came after the World Health Organisation (WHO) urged the country to share data on the origins of the pandemic, five years on from its start. Several studies so far have linked the origin of Covid to the Chinese city of Wuhan.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry claimed that more clues regarding the source of the virus are emerging on the global scale and that studies tracing its origin should be approached from a global perspective.

"China is willing to work with all parties to continue to promote scientific traceability research. Traceability work should be based on a global perspective. At present, more and more clues in the scientific community point to the source of viruses on a global scale," news agency Reuters quoted Chinese officials as saying.

The WHO, on Monday, urged China to share data on the origins of the Covid pandemic and said, "This is a moral and scientific imperative".

"Without transparency, sharing, and co-operation among countries, the world cannot adequately prevent and prepare for future epidemics and pandemics," a statement by the UN health watchdog said.

While most scientific studies suggest that the virus likely transferred naturally from animals to humans, some have proposed that it could have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan.

An earlier report by the news agency Associated Press had revealed that the Chinese government was tightly controlling research into the pandemic's origins, suppressing certain studies while promoting fringe theories suggesting the virus may have originated outside the country.

Data from the early days of the pandemic was uploaded by Chinese scientists to an international database in early 2023. However, a WHO expert group noted that "key pieces of data" necessary to fully understand the pandemic's origins remain missing.