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 The study, published this week by the U.S. National Institutes for
Health (NIH), showed that at least seven people in five U.S. states
were infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, weeks
before the United States reported its first official cases.
A China-World Health Organization (WHO) joint study published in
March said COVID-19 most likely originated in the country's wildlife
trade, with the virus passing into humans from bats via an
intermediary species.
But Beijing has promoted the theory that COVID-19 entered China from
overseas via contaminated frozen food, while a number of foreign
politicians are also calling for more investigations into the
possibility it leaked from a laboratory.
Zeng Guang, chief epidemiologist with the Chinese Center for Disease
Control and Prevention, told state-owned tabloid the Global Times
that attention should shift to the United States, which was slow to
test people in the early stages of the outbreak, and is also the
home of many biological laboratories.
"All bio-weapons related subjects that the country has should be
subject to scrutiny," he was quoted as saying.
Commenting on the U.S. study on Wednesday, foreign ministry
spokesman Zhao Lijian said it was now "obvious" the COVID-19
outbreak had "multiple origins" and that other countries should
co-operate with the WHO.
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 The origin of the pandemic has
become a source of political tension between
China and the United States, with much of the
recent focus on the Wuhan Institute of Virology
(WIV), located in Wuhan where the outbreak was
first identified in late 2019.
China has been criticised for its lack of transparency when it comes
to disclosing data about early cases as well as the viruses studied
at WIV.
A report by a U.S. government national laboratory concluded that it
was plausible that the virus had leaked from the Wuhan lab, the Wall
Street Journal reported earlier this month.
A previous study has raised the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 could
have been circulating in Europe as early as September, but experts
said this didn't necessarily mean it did not originate in China,
where many SARS-like coronaviruses have been found in the wild.
(Reporting by David Stanway and Samuel Shen; Editing by Michael
Perry)
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