Chinese health officials pushed back against recent comments made by the head of the World Health Organization about the country’s handling of early COVID-19 data.
Shen Hongbing, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, on Saturday accused the WHO of “attempting to smear China,” adding the organization should not help those who are trying to “politicize COVID-19.”
Shen was referring to remarks made by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last month when commenting on new genetic data that suggested COVID-19 originated from raccoon dogs being sold illegally.
That information — taken from samples collected from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, in early 2020 — was spotted by chance by a French scientist early last month.
Speaking with reporters on March 17, Ghebreyesus criticized Beijing, saying the “data could have and should have been shared three years ago.”
The head of the Chinese CDC objected to Ghebreyesus’ comments, slamming them as “offensive and disrespectful.”
As a responsible country and as scientists, we have always actively shared research results with scientists from around the world,” Shen said at a news conference Saturday.
The genetic material in question was uploaded to the world’s largest public virus database in late January by scientists at the Chinese CDC.
Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biology theoretician who works at the French National Research Agency, came across the information while doing other research on the database on March 4. She then contacted scientists who are looking into the origin of the COVID-19 virus.
After analyzing the data, the team found that some of the coronavirus-positive samples that had been collected from the Wuhan market between Jan. 1, 2020, and March 2, 2020, also contained genetic material from raccoon dogs.
While the discovery doesn’t prove the animals triggered the pandemic, the scientists believe it makes it more likely.
When the researchers asked the Chinese CDC about it, Beijing removed that information from the database — but by then it had already been copied by Débarre.