China rejects next stage of WHO Covid origins probe

China has rejected the next stage of a World Health Organization-led probe into the origins of Covid-19 because investigators intend to treat the theory that it may have leaked from a Wuhan lab as plausible. Zeng Yixin, vice-minister of the National Health Commission, told journalists at a press conference on Thursday that he had been “shocked” to see the “lab leak” hypothesis had become part of the proposed WHO plan for a second-phase study. “We cannot accept this kind of origin tracing plan,” he said and reiterated China’s claim that the theory that the virus may have leaked from a government lab in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the disease was discovered in late 2019, was conjecture…. (Excerpts from the Financial Times)