|
OSLO, Aug. 28-- There is no factual basis to shift the blame to China for one's own responsibility of ineffective response to the COVID-19 pandemic, visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi has said in Oslo. Wang made the statement Thursday at a joint press conference with Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide, when a reporter asked for Wang's comments on an allegation that China has failed to share information of the novel coronavirus, which the reporter said had originated in China, in a timely manner and that has led to the spread of COVID-19 to other countries. "What you have said is not the fact. China is the first country to report the epidemic, which does not mean that the novel coronavirus epidemic originated in China," Wang said. A lot of information and investigations, he said, have discovered the existence of the novel coronavirus in multiple countries around the world, and some of them had emerged before China reported the virus. So where the epidemic originated and who is "patient zero" is a scientific question that requires scientists and medical experts to reach a conclusion through scientific research, Wang said, adding that no one has the right to politicize the origin-tracing, let alone to label the virus. The novel coronavirus was unknown to all before the epidemic. China carried out an epidemiological investigation at the very beginning of discovering unknown pneumonia cases, identified the pathogen, and shared the whole gene sequence timely with the world, Wang said. | 
