China rebuffs WHO official's claims it has withheld COVID-19 data

April 8 (UPI) -- A top Chinese government health official on Saturday accused the World Health Organization of politicizing the investigation into the origins of COVID-19 pandemic.

Shen Hongbing, the director of China's Center for Disease Control, said statements from a WHO leader accusing China of withholding crucial information that could help identify the origins of the global pandemic were "a crude offense to the scientists around the world who participated in the initial-origin tracing work."

Speaking at a Beijing press conference, Shen said he is urging "certain people at the WHO to come back to the position of science and impartiality, instead of becoming a tool for politicizing COVID's origin by some country, whether voluntarily or forced."

His charged comments came in response to an opinion piece written by WHO COVID-19 Technical Lead Maria Van Kerkhove in the journal Science.

She wrote that China "has advanced technical capabilities and I therefore believe that more data exit that have yet to be shared -- on the wild and farmed animals trade; the testing of humans and animals in Wuhan and across China; the operations of labs in Wuhan working on coronaviruses; the earliest potential cases; and more. Lab Audit data exist and have not been shared, for example."

In March, scientists discovered a large amount of data on animal samples collected three years ago from Wuhan province had been uploaded onto the global genetic database GISAID.

The data, however, was not shared with the WHO in a timely manner and Van Kerkhove said the lack of transparency regarding early samples was "unacceptable."

Shen on Saturday denied China deliberately withheld any data.

"The preprint had been published and the subsequent data had also been publicly released so we didn't delay the release of the data," he said.