The Biden White House expressed additional concerns Thursday that China is withholding information that would either prove or disprove claims that the coronavirus pandemic originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Press secretary Jen Psaki, responding to a question from Fox News’s Peter Doocy, declined to say whether the administration had seen any circumstantial evidence that would disprove the lab leak theory, adding that “disproving a negative” is not a “responsible approach” toward investigating the “root causes of a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States.”
The virus has claimed 3.4 million lives globally, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. It has killed 588,000 people in the U.S.
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She reiterated past calls from herself, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and even some Trump administration officials for “an independent, transparent investigation.”
“That needs to happen with the cooperation and data provided from the Chinese government,” Psaki continued. “We don’t have enough information at this point to make an assessment.”
Pressed on when President Joe Biden would call Chinese President Xi Jinping and demand access to the withheld information, the press secretary countered that they “have made that call publicly many times, we have conveyed that privately, and we have certainly communicated that they were not transparent from the beginning.”
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Psaki called China’s refusal to cooperate with an international investigation “not acceptable,” adding that “there’s an opportunity now in the next stage of this effort, for them to be transparent, to participate in an international investigation that can bring a conclusion to the origins and provide information that we, Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in this country would love to have access to.”
