Liang Wannian, co-leader of the WHO-China joint expert team, attends a news conference the joint study on the origins of the coronavirus in Beijing on March 31, 2021. (Thomas Suen/Reuters)

SEOUL — Beijing on Wednesday rebuffed criticism from the head of the World Health Organization and foreign governments, saying China had shared coronavirus data openly and cooperated with an international probe.

A day after the release of a controversial WHO-China joint report on the coronavirus’s origins, Chinese members of the team said at a news conference in Beijing that the virus wasn’t proved to have originated in China and that the international community should consider the possibility it came from another country.

Liang Wannian, leader of the Chinese side of the WHO-China team, was chilly on the prospect of further probes in China, saying they should take place only as needed.

“The experts have visited all the places, met all the people, studied all the facilities and read all the documents, as they had wished,” said Liang, who is also a public health professor at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.

WHO report leaves unsettled ‘lab-leak’ theory on origins of covid pandemic

On Tuesday, the WHO and China released a report on the origins of the coronavirus that said it most likely had jumped from animals to humans through an intermediate animal host and played down the possibility it had leaked from a lab.

The United States and 13 other countries issued a joint statement expressing concern that the WHO-China report was “significantly delayed and lacked access to complete data and samples.” Australia, Canada, Britain, Japan and South Korea were signatories.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus surprised many observers Tuesday by saying the report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility of a lab leak. He pointedly said he expected future collaborations to include “more timely and comprehensive data-sharing.”

Pushing back against Tedros’s charge that the WHO team was not given access to raw data, Liang said that the experts were provided databases but that it was impractical to present every original record and specimen. Some early biological samples were not retained, he said.

“For this raw data, what do you call raw?” he said. “You can hardly imagine that after our experts arrive at the scene, that they will look at each patient case, each animal specimen, each original record from the earliest days, one after the other.”

As for Tedros’s statement that the possibility of a lab leak should be further investigated, Liang said that follow-up tracing efforts should take place globally, as the virus could have originated in another country.

“I’m not sure if he [Tedros] understands this question because this is a matter for us scientists,” he said. “It will be decided by scientists and by history.”

Liang said that there were “fierce disputes” between the foreign and Chinese members of the team in producing the report but called it a normal process of scientific research.

Asked about the possibility of follow-up visits from international experts, Liang said that further probes in China should take place “on an as-needed basis” and should be preceded by specific plans.

“At present it is premature to talk about,” Liang said. “We have just had that report published.”

Liang said that researchers in China would continue to search for the virus’s origin even if it took generations.

“We will continue the tracing work,” he said. “Every day that the origin hasn’t been found is a day that Chinese scientists will continue working hard.”

Pei Lin Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, and Emily Rauhala in Washington contributed to this report.

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