China now claims COVID-19 emerged in various parts of world, only it reported first

In its latest attempt to shift the blame for the emergence of COVID-19, China on Friday claimed that the virus broke out in the other parts of the world last year but it was the only country to have reported and acted first. China’s statement stands in contrast to the widely-held view that the deadly contagion originated in Wuhan before eventually becoming a global pandemic.

China has denied the US allegations that Coronavirus emerged from a bio-lab in Wuhan, and also rejected claims that it came from a wet market in the central Chinese city through bats or pangolins, before infecting humans.

Addressing a media briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said, "COVID-19 is a new kind of virus as more and more facts emerge as reports reveal, we all know that the epidemic broke out in various places in the world at the end of last year, while China was the first to report the outbreak, identified the pathogen and shared the genome sequence with the world."

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Hua's comments in response to US Secretary Mike Pompeo alleged that the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) covered-up the impact of the disease which has killed over one million people worldwide. The coronavirus crisis was infinitely made worse by the CPC's cover-up, Pompeo had said in Tokyo at the QUAD ministerial meeting of the US, India, Australia and Japan on Tuesday.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry statement came as the World Health Organisation (WHO) was gearing up to investigate the origin of COVID-19 in the country.

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COVID-19 impact

As per the data presented by Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, Coronavirus has so far infected over 36 million people and killed more than one million across the world. The US remains the worst affected country with over 7.6 million cases and over 2,12,000 deaths. Meanwhile, China was able to significantly control the impact of the pandemic, have reported 90,736 cases and 4,739 deaths to date.

The WHO has made a list of global experts to be sent to China to probe the origin of coronavirus but Beijing is yet to approve the list. In May, the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly, WHO's decision-making body currently headed by India, passed a unanimous resolution to investigate the origin of the virus. The resolution was also backed by China.

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