China denied the World Health Organization's proposal for a new investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 virus on Friday, saying it preferred scientific research over political efforts to determine how the disease originated
"We oppose political tracing...and abandoning the joint report," Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu told reporters. "We support scientific tracing," Ma added.
The COVID-19 virus originally appeared in late 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan before spreading throughout and beyond China, unleashing the greatest pandemic in a century.
According to the widely followed coronavirus tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University in the U.S., the pandemic has killed more than 4.3 million lives and infected more than 205.3 million individuals.
During a briefing with 31 representatives and ambassadors from 29 countries in Beijing, Ma said that the WHO secretariat recently developed a working proposal for the next phase without properly discussing it with its member countries, which has been rejected and questioned.
Ma went on to say that China was always willing to help in tracking COVID-19's origins and had never turned down cooperation. However, it disputes the politicization of the investigation, according to Chinese state media.
Xinhua news agency, which cited Ma, said China is continuing to perform "follow-up and supplementary" investigation into the origin of COVID-19, as outlined in the WHO joint report.
Ma said the next step of the COVID-19 origin-tracing effort should be done only by scientists to discover zoonotic origins and transmission channels.
On Thursday, the WHO encouraged all governments to work together to expedite research into the origins of the pandemic and "depoliticize the situation."
Ma told Chinese state media last month that 48 countries had sent a joint letter to the WHO about the origin of the virus.
He had blamed the U.S. for attempting to smear China over the investigation into the origins of COVID-19, claiming that a few forces led by the U.S. ran opposite to science regardless of the facts.
China had vehemently rejected the WHO's plan for the second phase of the COVID-19 origin investigation in June, claiming it was "shocked" by the idea since it contained language that did not respect science.
Beijing was enraged after WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in June that it was premature to rule out a possible link between the pandemic and a laboratory leak, adding that he had requested China to be more honest as scientists searched for the coronavirus's origin.
