Scott Morrison says victims of Covid-19 devastation deserve answers about whether virus originated in Wuhan lab
Scott Morrison has challenged China over the origins of Covid-19, saying the world ‘deserves’ answers on how the virus got out. The Prime Minister says that Australia will continue to push for answers the world “deserves” over the origins of Covid-19 despite pushback from China. Scott Morrison held firm on Australia’s probing approach to China despite significant backlash from the global power.
“Those who have lost their lives and their livelihoods, they deserve answers, and Australia will continue to ask to get those answers,” Mr. Morrison said after the federal cabinet on Friday.
World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus backflipped on Thursday, saying the organization was premature to rule out that a leak from a lab in Wuhan could have caused the Covid-19 pandemic.
Relations between Australia and China have deteriorated over the past 18 months, seemingly sparked by Australia’s push for an independent inquiry into the virus’s origins.
The move angered Beijing, where state media labeled Australia “gum stuck on the bottom of China’s shoe” and even suggested Covid-19 arrived in Wuhan via frozen Australian meat. But Mr. Morrison insisted “no-politics” fuelled Australia’s move, claiming its questions were made in good faith. Australia has always wanted to know for the sake of world health … what happened?” he said. The Prime Minister emphasized the need for answers amid the devastating fallout of a pandemic that “destroyed the lives of millions”.
The world needs answers to this. The world deserves answers to this,” he urged.
But Mr. Morrison did not mention his thoughts about where the virus originated. “We don’t know about the lab and whether that was the initiation of this. It may well have been, may not have been,” he said.
I don’t have a view either way, and I’m unable to make that judgment.
Some of the world’s top scientists have now gone public, stating overwhelming” evidence Covid-19 was created in a Wuhan lab. In June’s explosive opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Steven Quay and Professor Richard Muller said the chance the virus emerged naturally in animals in China was “one in a million”.
Dr. Quay, the chief executive of pharmaceutical company Atossa Therapeutics, said a key piece of evidence pointing to a lab leak was that it was already highly contagious when the virus first appeared. Dr. Quay noted this was unusual, given viruses usually evolved as they spread through a population until the most infectious form dominated. America’s top virus expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has also said he is “not convinced” the virus developed naturally, calling for more proof to be presented that the virus did not start at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, where coronavirus research was being conducted on bats.
