MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th July, 2021) Australia is determined to push for answers on the origin of the virus which caused the COVID-19 pandemic, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Friday.
Morrison met with journalists after a government meeting on measures to counter COVID-19 as snap lockdowns have been introduced in New South Wales and Victoria due to the spread of the Delta variant.
"Those who have lost their lives and their livelihoods, they deserve answers, and Australia will continue to ask to get those answers," the prime minister was quoted as saying by The Australian newspaper.
He stressed that the move was not political and was done in good faith because the world "deserves answers to this."
Australia's push for another independent investigation into the origins of the virus and continued allegations of a lab leak have caused a deterioration in the relations between Canberra and Beijing in recent months.
In March, the World Health Organization published a report on the results of its expert team's visit to Wuhan, which concluded that the leak of COVID-19 from a local state-run laboratory was very unlikely. According to the experts, the novel coronavirus was most likely transmitted to humans from bats through another animal.
However, a US intelligence report revealed that three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill with respiratory infections similar to COVID-19 in November of 2019, a month before China officially reported its first cases. US President Joe Biden consequently ordered the intelligence community to investigate the leak theory.
