US President Joe Biden attacks China on origins of COVID-19, says `world deserves answers`

The US President said that `critical information` about the origins of coronavirus exists in the People`s Republic of China.

New Delhi: US President Joe Biden on Friday (August 27, 2021) launched a scathing attack on China on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and said that the world deserves answers. Biden was speaking after he received the report from his intelligence community into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

"I am grateful for the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals, and while this review has concluded, our efforts to understand the origins of this pandemic will not rest. We will do everything we can to trace the roots of this outbreak that has caused so much pain and death around the world, so that we can take every necessary precaution to prevent it from happening again," Biden said.

The US President added that 'critical information' about the origins of coronavirus exists in the People's Republic of China. 

"Yet from the beginning, government officials in China have worked to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community from accessing it. To this day, the PRC continues to reject calls for transparency and withhold information, even as the toll of this pandemic continues to rise," he said. 

"The world deserves answers, and I will not rest until we get them. Responsible nations do not shirk these kinds of responsibilities to the rest of the world. Pandemics do not respect international borders, and we all must better understand how COVID-19 came to be in order to prevent further pandemics," Biden stated while attacking China.

He said that the United States will continue working with 'like-minded partners' around the world to press the People's Republic of China to fully share information and to cooperate with the World Health Organization's Phase II evidence-based, expert-led determination into the origins of COVID-19. 

"We will also continue to press the PRC to adhere to scientific norms and standards, including sharing information and data from the earliest days of the pandemic, protocols related to biosafety, and information from animal populations. We must have a full and transparent accounting of this global tragedy. Nothing less is acceptable," he said.

Earlier, the US intelligence community's assessment on the coronavirus origins claimed that cooperation from China will be needed to reach a conclusive assessment on the origins of COVID-19.

"China's cooperation most likely would be needed to reach a conclusive assessment of the origins of COVID-19. Beijing, however, continues to hinder the global investigation, resist sharing information and blame other countries, including the United States," the US Intelligence Community said in its unclassified summary of assessment on the novel coronavirus origins.

The US Intelligence Community also said that China's unwillingness to participate in the investigation reflects its own uncertainty about the possible consequences of the probe as well as Beijing's frustration with the international community that uses the issue to exert political pressure on China.

Meanwhile, China's embassy in Washington has issued a statement saying the report 'wrongly' claimed that China continued to hinder the investigation and added that 'a report fabricated by the US intelligence community is not scientifically credible'.

"The origin-tracing is a matter of science; it should and can only be left to scientists, not intelligence experts," it said.

This is to be noted that COVID-19 has now killed over 4.6 million people worldwide. 

(With agency inputs)