WUHAN

China on Aug. 13 rejected the World Health Organization's calls for a renewed probe into the origins of COVID-19, saying it supported "scientific" over "political" efforts to find out how the virus started.

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The number of COVID-19 infections recorded worldwide passed 200 million on Aug. 5, an AFP count showed, as China pledged to provide two billion vaccine doses this year to combat surging infections caused by the Delta variant.

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Chinese officials have ordered all 11 million residents of Wuhan to be tested for Covid-19, after new cases emerged in the city for the first time in more than a year.

On Tuesday the national health commission reported eight cases in Wuhan, the city where Covid-19 was first detected in late 2019, before spreading around the world.

Authorities in Wuhan on Aug. 3 said they would test its entire population for COVID-19 after the central Chinese city where the coronavirus emerged reported its first local infections in more than a year.

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China and Australia ramped up COVID-19 curbs on July 31 as Delta variant cases surged and tens of thousands rallied in France against restrictions designed to stop the pandemic.

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The Delta variant, which was first identified in India, is forcing governments to reimpose tough measures, while other nations are reconsidering plans to open their economies.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in Kuwait on July 28 where he pledged his support to the U.N. agency's investigation in China into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

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However, the British magazine hid it, writes the "Daily Mail", referring to the book by the British scientist Jeremy Farrar, as "Sputnik" reports.
Farrar pointed out that they started drawing attention to the new virus in China at the end of 2019, when the first cases were registered in Wuhan.

In July, the WHO offered to carry out a second phase of research in China, including a laboratory and market test in Wuhan.

"We will not accept such an origin research plan, because in some respects it does not take into account common sense and is contrary to science," Zen Jensin, deputy minister of the National Health Commission, told reporters.

These are the fourth wave of coronavirus caused by the delta strain, whose peak is expected in September at the latest, and the introduction of the third dose of the vaccine, for which the recommendation will be known in the next two weeks.

Namely, numerous experts, many of whom are connected with the World Health Organization, believe that political tensions between the United States and China make that investigation impossible and that the answers they might come to would not be credible.