CHINA called on the United States to “stop poisoning international co-operation on virus tracing” yesterday, after released findings from a 90-day US probe proved a damp squib.

Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu said origin-tracing was a complex scientific matter but the US had been “obsessed” with political manipulation.

The US report, which President Joe Biden ordered spooks to produce after citing doubts about the World Health Organisation (WHO’s) investigation into the coronavirus’s origins, says that intelligence agencies are divided. 

Four agencies are said to agree that the balance of evidence points to transmission from animals to humans, the overwhelming consensus of scientists worldwide and the most likely scenario according to the WHO probe.

A fifth reportedly believes that it originated in a Chinese laboratory, a theory first raised by Donald Trump which China says is being pushed in order to demonise it.

The US investigators said they did not believe the virus was developed as a bioweapon and did not consider it to be genetically engineered.

They added that they did not think China’s government knew about the virus’s existence before the Wuhan outbreak which kicked off the global pandemic.

But Mr Biden still used the occasion to insinuate that China was hiding something, saying: “The world deserves answers, and I will not rest until we get them.”

He accused China of obstructing efforts to investigate the virus “from the beginning.”

China retorted that it had co-operated fully with two international investigations into the virus’s origins in Wuhan itself, had warned the US and other countries of the outbreak on January 3 last year and had sequenced and published its genome by January 11, a record for a new virus.