US secretary of state says global pressure may force China to be transparent on Covid-19

Name: US pledges to donate 750,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine to Taiwan amid ongoing outbreak
Uploaded: 2021-06-07T21:41:54.000Z
Duration: 2 min
Description: US pledges to donate 750,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine to Taiwan amid ongoing outbreak

Blinken dodges questions about US measures if China does not cooperate on efforts to determine whether the coronavirus escaped from a Chinese laboratory

A decision on whether to boycott 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics will be announced in ‘weeks to come’

3-MIN READ3-MIN

99+

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington last week. Photo: AFP

Robert Delaney

Published: 5:41am, 8 Jun 2021Updated: 7:49am, 8 Jun 2021

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday dodged questions about what measures Washington would take if Beijing does not cooperate on efforts to determine whether the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 escaped from a Chinese laboratory, suggesting instead that international pressure would help convince the Chinese government.

“I don’t want to get into … hypotheticals going forward in the future about what we would or would not do, but I think I can say with confidence that there is going to be an increasing international demand that countries, including China, meet the responsibilities when it comes to providing information access and transparency on global health, including [Covid-19],” Blinken said in a hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Several nations – including the United States, Britain and Japan – said the findings of a World Health Organization (WHO)-led inquiry into how the new pathogen first began spreading in the Chinese city of Wuhan – where it was detected in late 2019 – were flawed by a lack of transparency and independence from Beijing. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also cited gaps in data access for the international scientists on the ground, though China has defended its transparency.

Following pressure from lawmakers in both parties and a report by The Wall Street Journal that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalised just before the Covid-19 outbreak was confirmed in China, President Joe Biden ordered the US intelligence community to look further into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

02:00

US pledges to donate 750,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine to Taiwan amid ongoing outbreak

Mike Pompeo, Blinken’s immediate predecessor under former president Donald Trump, piled on, criticising Biden for noting in his announcement of the investigation that the true source of the new virus may never be known.

“In the United States, we punish destruction of evidence and consider cover-ups as indicating culpability,” Pompeo said in an opinion piece published by The Washington Post on Monday. “We hold inherently dangerous activities to strict liability. China is already clearly guilty on these counts.”