Top US diplomat says ‘China has to cooperate’ with investigation into Covid’s origins

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said that China “has to cooperate” with an additional US and World Health Organisation-led investigation into how the Covid-19 outbreak began.

He made the comments while being interviewed by John Dickerson on CBS’ Face The Nation on Sunday while emphasising the importance of Beijing joining in an investigation into what led to the virus that has disrupted the world for more than a year.

Mr Blinken said, “One of the things that’s coming out of the G7 is an insistence that the WHO be able to move forward with China cooperating on this so-called Phase-two report to build on the initial report, which had real problems with it, not the least of which was China’s failure to cooperate.”

He called on China to join the international effort to figure out what caused the coronavirus. The theory that it escaped from a lab in Wuhan has gained mainstream traction in recent weeks, with the Biden administration ordering an intelligence community investigation.

“China has to cooperate with that transparency, access for international experts, information sharing that has to happen. And again, I think you’re seeing countries coming together to insist on that,” he said.

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