China’s refusal to cooperate clouds Covid investigation: Report

A new report says China's lack of cooperation has made it difficult to determine the origins of Covid and calls for stronger international pressure on Beijing. The article also urges scrutiny of US-linked research connections and renewed efforts to uncover the pandemic's source

New Delhi: China’s refusal to cooperate makes it extraordinarily difficult for the US to determine conclusively whether the Covid virus was engineered in Wuhan, a new report has said, adding that determining whether American agencies funded or collaborated on research that crossed into “gain-of-function territory is largely within America’s own power”.

Jianli Yang writes in National Review that it is long past time to stop allowing the Chinese Communist Party to “plead the Fifth.”

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The irony is that the US Fifth Amendment exists to protect constitutional rights, but “Beijing has transformed it into a governing philosophy”.

The US, says the author, should lead an international political and scientific campaign to compel genuine cooperation from Beijing.

“From the very beginning, the Chinese government violated both the spirit and the obligations of international public-health cooperation. Authorities suppressed whistleblowing doctors, silenced journalists, censored scientists, destroyed or restricted access to early data, refused independent access to crucial records, removed online databases, and tightly controlled every stage of the investigation,” the article observes.

Every meaningful inquiry encountered political barriers erected by Beijing, it adds.

The article further states that it the US Congress “truly wishes to advance the search for Covid’s origins, it should conduct a comprehensive, credible accounting of NIAID’s relationship with EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology”.

Such an inquiry would not only clarify American accountability; it might also uncover critical evidence pointing toward the pandemic’s true source, says the article.

“Still, the most curious question is not whether China obstructed investigations. It clearly did. The real mystery is why so much of the world eventually accepted that obstruction,” the writer laments.

More than six years have passed Since Covid struck the world.

“The victims of the greatest pandemic in a century deserve better than another Washington shouting match. They deserve the truth,” Yang stresses.

Earlier, former top US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination before a sharply divided Senate committee, as Republican lawmakers revived allegations over US-funded coronavirus research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology and sought answers on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee late last month quickly became a fierce partisan confrontation, with Chairman Rand Paul accusing Fauci of helping fund “dangerous gain-of-function research” in Wuhan and later announcing that the committee would consider holding him in contempt for refusing to answer questions despite appearing under subpoena.