BEIJING (AP) - China on Tuesday said it has been "open and transparent" in the search for the origins of COVID-19, after questions about how the pandemic began received new attention.Most recently, the U.S.
Department of Energy assessed with "low confidence" that the pandemic that was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 began with the leak of a virus from a lab.
The report hasn’t been made public.China had "shared the most data and research results on virus tracing and made important contributions to global virus tracing research," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning Mao told reporters at a daily briefing."Politicizing the issue of virus tracing will not smear China but will only damage the U.S.'s own credibility," Mao said, in response to complaints from U.S.
officials and members of Congress that China has not been entirely cooperative.Her comments came amid continuing questions about how the virus that has killed more than 6.8 million people worldwide first emerged.RELATED: Another US agency assesses COVID-19 origin likely a Chinese 'lab leak': reportChinese epidemic control workers from a local hospital wear protective suit and masks while waiting to register people for a nucleic acid test for COVID-19 at a testing center on June 16, 2020 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images) Others in the U.S.