Personnel at work inside the bio-level 4 lab research at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, September 26, 2002. (Photo: CFP)

China condemned the United States for politicizing the COVID-19 pandemic at a routing press briefing on Friday and outlined four issues needing US research.

Responding to a question about US politicization of the novel coronavirus origin, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian said the US was disrespectful towards “science and justice.”

“If truly responsible and transparent,” Zhao said, the US should first explain four things about the virus origin.

(Posters: People's Daily app)

Firstly, the US should release data on early cases as soon as possible, he said. Zhao mentioned an unexplained respiratory illness in Virginia and an e-vaping-related lung illness in Wisconsin in July 2019.

The US should conduct nucleic acid and antibody tests on serum samples from these patients and determine how many were COVID-19 cases, Zhao insisted.

Secondly, the US should invite experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate Fort Detrick, a center of US military research related to biology, as well as more than 200 overseas bio labs, he said.

Fort Detrick was shut down after a serious safety incident in 2019 “but the US side has never made an explanation to the international community or the American people,” he said.

Thirdly, Zhao called on the US to invite WHO experts to investigate the University of North Carolina.

The US has been stigmatizing the Wuhan Institute of Virology as the source of the viruses that caused COVID-19, but in fact the US was the world's largest sponsor of such research, the spokesperson said.

In particular the Ralph Baric team at the University of North Carolina is an authority on this type of research, Zhao noted, and had extremely mature technology to create a new coronavirus using an existing one.

An investigation of Baric's team and its laboratory would clarify whether their coronavirus research produced the COVID-19 virus, he said.

Fourthly, the US should release information about American military personnel who participated in the Wuhan Military Games, Zhao said.

More than 300 military athletes participated in the games in Wuhan in 2019.

“Did any of them show symptoms similar to COVID-19? What diseases were reported exactly for these military athletes?” Zhao said.

He urged the US to make the information public as soon as possible.