China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs refuted Wednesday malicious rumors claiming China was “forced” to join the co-proposal of the resolution on identifying the zoonotic source of the coronavirus and evaluating the World Health Organization’s (WHO) COVID-19 response, saying the resolution broke up attempts by some countries to politicize the pandemic issue.
Zhao Lijian, spokesperson for the ministry, said that China and more than 140 other countries jointly proposed the resolution. The resolution was agreed by all the member states, including China, the US and Australia, at the 73rd World Health Assembly (WHA) meeting on Tuesday.
“We took the initiative to co-propose the resolution,” said Zhao, rejecting the rumor by certain media reports claiming China “was forced” to join the co-proposal of the resolution.
He said that China, together with most other countries, has resolutely quashed the attempts by some countries to politicize the coronavirus and the assessment issues, thus ensuring the objectivity and fairness of the resolution.
“We urge certain countries to stop making up lies to justify their own failures,” said Zhao.
The resolution clearly recognizes and supports the WHO’s key leadership role amid the anti-pandemic work. It calls on member states to prevent discrimination and stigmatization, combat errors and misinformation, strengthen cooperation in the development of diagnostic tools, diagnostic and treatment methods, medicines and vaccines, and conduct timely assessments of the WHO’s response to the outbreak, which are all in line with China’s position and the common aspirations of the vast majority of countries in the international community, Zhao noted.
As for tracing the source of the coronavirus, some countries see the issue as a priority but the vast majority of countries believed that the current focus is on epidemic prevention and control, which suggests that the attempts to politicize the issue are not the majority position, Zhao said.
The resolution strictly limits the scope of the research within the identification of the animal sources, intermediate hosts and routes of transmission, aiming to serve the international community better to respond to outbreaks in the future.
The assessment of the WHO’s COVID-19 response will be carried out based on principles of being “impartial, independent and comprehensive,” which means that the assessment cannot be monopolized by a few countries, Zhao said, noting that China hopes that the resolution can be fully and accurately implemented.
Conflicts and divisions rose a few days ago before the WHA meeting as countries like the US and Australia targeted China and the WHO, accusing Beijing of culpability in the coronavirus outbreak.
The US, Australia and China’s island of Taiwan have become the largest losers at this year’s WHA meeting, as they were either isolated or abandoned by the global community for continuing to politicize the pandemic and diverting the joint efforts in fighting this battle, some Chinese experts said.
Contrary to China’s commitment to the global anti-epidemic fight, US President Donald Trump escalated his “blame game” toward China and the WHO, an old-fashioned tactic used by some US politicians in the past few months to divert public attention away from their mishandling of the unprecedented public health crisis in the US.
Photo taken on Jan. 30, 2020 shows the headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland.(Xinhua/Chen Junxia)
