A growing diplomatic dispute over a World Health Organization fact-finding mission on the origins of Covid-19 increased on Sunday, when China said the United States had “seriously damaged” international cooperation in the coronavirus pandemic.
The United States “has severely damaged multilateral institutions, including the WHO,” the Chinese embassy in Washington said in a statement. It seemed to refer to the notification that the US would withdraw from the organization last July – a decision reversed by the Biden government.
They “seriously undermined international cooperation at Covid-19,” the statement said, adding that the United States was “acting as if none of this had happened”, while “pointing the finger at other countries that have faithfully supported WHO”.
“With this track record, how can you win the trust of everyone,” he added.
The statement was released less than 24 hours after White House National Security adviser Jake Sullivan said the United States had “deep concerns” about how the findings of the WHO investigation were communicated.
“It is imperative that this report is independent, with conclusions from experts free from intervention or change by the Chinese government,” he said in a statement. “To better understand this pandemic and prepare for the next one, China must make its data available from the first days of the outbreak.”
UK Foreign Minister Dominic Raab also said on Sunday that the UK shares concerns that investigators “get full cooperation and get the answers they need”.
“We will be pressing for [the WHO mission] to have full access, get all the data you need to be able to answer the questions that I think most people want to hear answered about the outbreak, the causes, “he told the BBC.” And this is important, not for the geopolitical point-punctuation or anything like that, but for us to learn the lessons and prevent it from happening again. “
The four-week investigation in China earlier this year was affected by delays, concerns about access and disputes between Beijing and Washington.
After they released their preliminary findings last week, Dominic Dwyer, an Australian infectious disease specialist on the WHO team, told Reuters on Saturday that he had requested raw patient data in 174 cases that China had identified in the early stages of the outbreak. in Wuhan, as well as other cases, but only with a summary.
Their comments came after other media reports suggested that the data they requested was denied to investigators during the trip.
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However, another member of the team, Prof. John Watson, told the BBC on Sunday that “a lot of data” was provided to them by the Chinese and that criticism of the information conveyed did not “characterize the mission as a whole.”
Peter Daszak, a British zoologist, also tweeted: “As the leader of the animal / environmental working group, I found trust and openness with my counterpart in China,” adding that the team gained access to new essential data.
Thea Kølsen Fischer, a Danish member of the team, also tweeted that she and her colleagues have built “a good relationship” with their Chinese colleagues.
WHO said on Friday it would publish the full final report of the team’s findings in the coming weeks.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Eric Baculinao contributed.