The World Health Organisation (WHO) wants to launch a second investigation into the origins of COVID in China, including audits of Wuhan laboratories.
It comes after the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said there had been a “premature push” to rule out a theory that the virus escaped from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan, where the first human infections were discovered in late 2019.
Dr Tedros has now presented proposals for a second phase of studies in China, which would include investigations into laboratories.
However, there has been no sign that Beijing would accept another international probe, diplomats have said.
A WHO-led team spent four weeks in and around the central city of Wuhan with Chinese researchers in January.
The teams said in a joint report in March that the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal.
