July 23, 2021: -On Thursday, China rejected a World Health Organization plan for the second phase of an investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, including the hypothesis it could have escaped from a Chinese laboratory, a top health official says.

The WHO this month proposed a second phase of studies into the beginning of Covid-19 in China, which includes audits of laboratories and markets in the city of Wuhan, which calls for transparency from authorities.

“We will not accept such an origins-tracing plan as it, in some aspects, disregards common sense and defies science,” the vice-minister of the National Health Commission (NHC), Zeng Yixin, told reporters.

Zeng said he was taken aback when he read the WHO plan for the first time due to the hypothesis that a Chinese violation of laboratory protocols had caused the virus to leak in research.

“We hope the WHO would review the considerations and suggestions made by Chinese experts and treat the origin tracing of the coronavirus as a scientific matter, and get rid of political interference,” Zeng further said.

China opposed politicizing the study, he said.

The first known cases emerged in Wuhan, a city in China, in December 2019. The virus has jumped to humans from animals being sold for food at a city market.

In May, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered aides to find answers to questions regarding the origin, saying that U.S. intelligence agencies were pursuing rival theories, potentially including a laboratory accident in China.

Zeng and other officials and Chinese experts at the news conference urged the WHO to expand origin-tracing efforts beyond China to other countries.

“We believe a slab leak is extremely unlikely, and it is not necessary to invest energy and efforts in this regard,” said Liang Wannian, the Chinese team leader on the WHO joint expert team.

Although Liang said, the lab leak hypothesis could not be entirely discounted but suggested that other countries could look into the possibility it leaked from their labs if the evidence warranted.