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The United States must work with China to find a global solution to end the raging COVID-19 pandemic, said renowned US economist Jeffrey Sachs in an interview with Malaysian media published on Sept 5.
In an email interview with Malaysian newspaper the Star, Sachs said the global response to the pandemic has been wholly inadequate and one of the main geopolitical problems might have been the failure of the US to work with China for global solutions.
"This is tragic, since China has done an excellent job of suppressing the pandemic, and the world could and should have learned a lot more from China's response," said the US economist, who heads the Lancet COVID-19 Commission, which has been created to help speed up global, equitable, and lasting solutions to the pandemic.
MANAMA - The United States has been using the COVID-19 pandemic as a tool of political manipulation against China despite China's openness, transparency and cooperation with all parties in tracking down the origins of the lethal virus, said Chinese ambassador to Bahrain recently.
In an op-ed in Bahrain's the Daily Tribune, Anwar Habibullah said that while the international community is working hard to overcome the epidemic, "the United States, out of its own interests, neglected the international consensus of fighting against COVID-19 corporately and scientifically," said the ambassador.
The so-called report on the origins of COVID-19 compiled by the US intelligence community recently "is a mendacious report made up for political purposes", stressed the ambassador.
"China has always followed the principles of openness, transparency, and responsibility to introduce the virus information to the world, share the genome sequence of the virus, and carry out anti-epidemic cooperation."
The first suspicious COVID-19 case found in China was reported to local authorities on Dec 27, 2019 and an emergency notice was later issued. On Dec 31, 2019, China reported relevant information to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the diplomat said.
He stressed China has demonstrated a scientific, professional, serious, and responsible attitude from the beginning, and since last year invited WHO experts twice to China to track down patient zero.
"China's open and transparent attitude on the issue of COVID-19 origins tracing was fully affirmed by international experts," stated the envoy.
Out of a "sinister intention" to suppress China, the United States also continued to pressure other countries and international organizations to adopt special measures against China on the issue of virus origins while China was working with global scientists and conducting large-scale global humanitarian operations, the diplomat said.
"We have provided $2 billion in assistance for the COVID-19 response and economic and social recovery in developing countries hit by the pandemic," he added.
He called China-Bahrain cooperation in the fight against COVID-19 an outstanding example.
"Bahrain government took the lead in approving the registration of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine, and this cooperation played a positive role in vaccine research as well as anti-epidemic cooperation in other countries."
The envoy called for the non-politicization of scientific issues and urged all countries to unite and overcome the pandemic.
A recent report on the origins of COVID-19 published by the US intelligence community is "questionable" and contains "opaque" evaluations, former Maldivian President Mohamed Waheed Hassan has said. (Read more)
Russia Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has criticized a so-called investigation report on COVID-19's origins recently released by the US intelligence community.
"I would like to note with regret that the publication only led to another round of insinuations around a generally important and, I emphasize, a purely scientific issue," said Zakharova during her weekly briefing last week.
She stressed that such steps increased tensions in society and the international arena, and impeded joint actions to counter the spread of the virus.
Politicizing the origins of COVID-19 will only lead to untrustworthy conclusions, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday during the plenary session of the sixth Eastern Economic Forum (EEF).
Investigations into the origins of COVID-19 must be based on objective facts, and politicization only steers the world away from the truth, he said. (Read more)
The US intelligence community's assessment on the origins of COVID-19, released on Friday, does not rule out either natural exposure or a laboratory accident. It falsely claims that China "continues to hinder the global investigation, resists sharing information and blames other countries".
In an article published in the Guyana Chronicle newspaper, Guyana's former president Donald Rabindranauth Ramotar said: "All of this is occurring because of the phenomenal and social economic progress that China has made over the last four decades."
MOSCOW - The United States is using its investigation into the origins of COVID-19 as a political tool to pressure China and preserve hegemony, according to an article published recently on the portal Geopolitika.ru.
In a workshop that took place in the Russian city of Novosibirsk in August, experts from Germany, Austria, Turkey, Russia and Kazakhstan gathered to discuss Washington's geopolitical motives behind its investigation into the pandemic's origins, according to the article.
The participants concluded that the United States is using COVID-19 origins tracing as a weapon of "comprehensive warfare" and a way to "suppress the pace of China's development."
Washington fears losing its political hegemony and is therefore attempting to use the media as an instrument to wage disinformation campaigns regarding the origins of COVID-19 and issues related to Xinjiang.
With all social platforms controlled by more than a dozen companies in the United States, the situation is becoming rather dangerous with fake news spreading rapidly and uncontrollably.
"The western media have deliberately ignored the fact that the United States has set up a large number of biological laboratories around the world and some scandals about American biological experiments," it said. "For example, the United States once had a virus leak in the Lugar center in Georgia."
The article added that uncovering the origins of COVID-19 should not be a geopolitical issue and all countries should work together to resolve the matter.
Uncovering the origins of COVID-19 is a matter for science and should be free of political interference, a senior Bangladeshi official said on Thursday.
In an interview with Xinhua, AFM Ruhal Haque, chairman of Bangladesh's Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, stressed that the study of the origins of COVID-19 should not be politicized.
KAMPALA - It is important to stop politicizing COVID-19 and conduct science-based studies to identify the true origins of the coronavirus and its pathway to humans, a Ugandan analyst has said.
The US report on COVID-19 origins tracing has ruled out the possibility that the virus was developed as a biological weapon, and suggested that it probably "was not genetically engineered," Allawi Ssemanda, executive director of Development Watch Center, said in an article published at the New Vision website on Wednesday.
The hypothesis of a "lab leak" as a possible source of the virus was concluded to be "extremely unlikely" by the report of the China-World Health Organization joint mission, said the scholar in the article, noting that other scientific studies conducted by renowned scholars and scientists have also hinted at natural causes as the source of the virus.
"The 'lab leak theory' and 'China virus' are conspiracies whose aim is to create a narrative that China (should) be held accountable for the COVID-19 outbreak, which plays in political interests of some countries," scholars from Uppsala University and Swedish Research Council were quoted in this article as saying.
MOSCOW - Politicizing the origins of COVID-19 will only lead to untrustworthy conclusions, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday during the plenary session of the sixth Eastern Economic Forum (EEF).
"Those who choose to politicize this issue are making colossal, catastrophic mistakes in the fight against the pandemic," Putin said.
"When politicization occurs, this immediately decreases the confidence in the conclusions," he said.
Investigations into the origins of COVID-19 must be based on objective facts, and politicization only steers the world away from the truth, he said.
It is significant for everyone to discard a politicized approach and unite in the fight against the pandemic and its consequences, he added.
The sixth EEF kicked off on Thursday and ends on Saturday in the Russian city of Vladivostok in both an online and offline format. The main theme of this year's event is "The Opportunities for the Far East in a World under Transformation."
Founded by Putin in 2015, the EEF has served as an important venue for dialogue among politicians, business executives and experts for Far East development and regional cooperation.
MALE - A recent report on the origins of COVID-19 published by the US intelligence community is "questionable" and contains "opaque" evaluations, former Maldivian President Mohamed Waheed Hassan has said.
"When it comes to an issue of global health, the first priority has to be science and facts. Intuition, analysis and many intelligence generating methodologies have no place in the public health sphere," Waheed said in a recent interview with Xinhua.
"However, given the opaque nature of the evaluations used in the decision-making processes of intelligence communities, the amount of consideration given to science is questionable."
"It is concerning how politicized and slanderous the report has become in the Western press," Waheed said.
"It is likely that politicians and pundits are trying to find a way to place blame rather than supporting nations to work together for the common good," he added.
"It is clear that the intention behind keeping the anti-China narrative alive is to force compliance, rather than to seek any form of collaboration," the former president said.
The United States appears to be scapegoating foreign countries to defuse domestic ire, Waheed said. "American politicians are scrambling to find ways to lessen domestic tension, hostility and blame."
"If we had avoided this over-politicization from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we would have taken more science-based actions to control the outbreak, and would have minimized the mutation of the COVID-19 virus," Waheed said.
Noting that China was the first country to take severe measures to deal with the pandemic, he said, "if all nations had taken the same drastic steps, we would not be where we are today."
The former president expressed his sincere gratitude to the Chinese government and people for the generous assistance offered to the Maldives during the pandemic, which has strengthened the two countries' friendship and reinforced the foundation of future bilateral cooperation.
Waheed served as president of the Maldives from 2012 to 2013.
HELSINK - COVID-19 cases are rapidly resurging in multiple countries, while the US politicians keep telling lies and ducking responsibilities to undermine global anti-pandemic cooperation, a Finnish media outlet has reported.
The US intelligence community recently issued a report on the origins tracing of COVID-19, and the White House also released a relevant statement. These documents, showing no respect for science and facts, are ironclad evidence of politicizing the issue of COVID-19 origins tracing, Helsinki Times said in an article on Tuesday.
The investigation report by US intelligence departments found no evidence they wanted, but it does not mean that the US politicians would stop their political manipulation, it said.
The distorted acts, according to the article, once again proved that the true intention of the White House is to politicize the COVID-19 origins tracing.
The politicization of origins tracing of COVID-19 has no way out, and spreading political viruses would bring only huge consequences, said the news report.
Most Chinese young people view the US' performance during the COVID-19 pandemic negatively and are angry at the US politicizing origins tracing, according to a survey conducted by the Communist Youth League and China Youth Daily and released on Sept 2.
98.6 percent of the respondents said they are angry at US' behavior and 96.1 percent commented negatively on the US' performance during the pandemic. 94 percent said the COVID-19 origins tracing is a scientific question so global tracing is needed.
Currently, confirmed cases in the US have surpassed 40 million and more than 650,000 have died, however, the US "isn't focused on controlling the spread of the virus but politicizing origins-tracing problem to blame China", said a respondent.
When it comes to the specific behaviors of US, 86.7 percent respondents said they are shocked that an economic superpower has no respect for human lives. 81 percent said the reason is that the US government was busy with the presidential election and so ignored the virus problem.
Eighty percent respondents said the US is trying to divert the global public attention by blaming China. A respondent said it is not OK that the US has not responded to the appeal of investigating the Fort Detrick Biological Laboratory.
"Vaccine nationalism and 'tracing politicization' are not conducive to the cooperative fight against the epidemic. There is no way out to shirk its responsibility," said a respondent.
The study includes 41,332 valid samples covering 31 provinces, cities and districts in China. The average age of respondents is 20.6, with males accounting for 40.5 percent and females 59.5 percent.
LONDON - Though it is known that SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, originated from animals, its exact source and intermediate host remain unclear, an article has said.
The article published Tuesday on News Medical, an open-access medical and life science hub, explained how the virus reached humans, based on observations of previous coronavirus outbreaks.
Citing research findings by scientists at the University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research in Britain and the South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, China, the article shed light on how the virus may have reached humans from animals.
Humans are now the dominant SARS-CoV-2 host species, it warned, adding that there is therefore a danger of the virus jumping from humans to other animal species, called reverse zoonosis, as is suspected for white-tailed deer in the United States.
"Humanity must work together beyond country borders to amplify surveillance for coronaviruses at the human-animal interface to minimize the threat of both established and evolving variants evading vaccines and to stop future spillover events," researchers urged in the article.
Origins tracing and research work of COVID-19 should be carried out based on laboratory samples collected around the world prior to its outbreak in 2019, said a Mozambican health expert.
"It is important to carry out investigations on samples stored for the last three or four years in laboratories in various parts of the world," said Eduardo Samo Gudo, deputy director of Mozambique's National Health Institute, in a recent interview with Xinhua, adding that samples extracted from animals should be included.
MAPUTO - Origins tracing and research work of COVID-19 should be carried out based on laboratory samples collected around the world prior to its outbreak in 2019, said a Mozambican health expert.
"It is important to carry out investigations on samples stored for the last three or four years in laboratories in various parts of the world," said Eduardo Samo Gudo, deputy director of Mozambique's National Health Institute, in a recent interview with Xinhua, adding that samples extracted from animals should be included.
The health expert said the truth may never be reached if the process is jeopardized by politicization.
"When science is politicized, we lose all scientific content and insight, and scientific arguments are forgotten," said Gudo.
There have been many precedents where the first case was detected in one country but the zoonotic event (when the virus leaps from animal species to human) happened in another country, which is normal, explained Gudo.
"The important thing is not to politicize the matter, the investigation of the origin is a scientific, not a political issue," he said.
Politicizing origins tracing of COVID-19 pandemic will lead nowhere, and Washington should return to a science-based, cooperation-driven global response, China's Ambassador to Iran Chang Hua said.
He wrote in an article published by Tasnim News Agency on Monday that China always believes that origins tracing of COVID-19 is a complex issue of science. (Read more)
The United States intelligence community's report on the origins of COVID-19 lacks credibility and marks another attempt to politicize the pandemic, experts said in calling for intensified international cooperation to fight the coronavirus. They also made clear that efforts to determine how the virus arose should be left to scientists.
DHAKA - A Bangladeshi party leader has turned down the US report on COVID-19 origins tracing on Monday, calling it "fabricated, false" and politically motivated.
The motive of the report appears to be making the COVID-19 pandemic a political matter, Dilip Barua, general secretary of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist), told Xinhua in a statement.
The report will harm a science-based approach towards origins tracing and the global fight against COVID-19, said Barua, also former Bangladeshi Industries Minister.
He further said that the political manipulation of origins tracing by the United States has been widely rejected by the international community.
He urged the international community to advocate for science-based studies to trace the origins of the virus.
Also, he stressed the need for a further strengthening of anti-epidemic cooperation among the major countries and making more contributions towards the ultimate victory of humanity over the pandemic.
The investigation of the origins of COVID-19 should be dealt with solely by scientists and any politicization of this issue is deeply regretted and damaging global cooperation in the fight against the pandemic, said a renowned US scholar.
"The (COVID) origins inquiry...should be left to the scientists to do, and it will take time to come to a conclusion on that," Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies, told Xinhua in an interview.
