The idea that the coronavirus pandemic originated accidentally via Chinese laboratory workers has surfaced again, this time in a documentary aired by Danish TV on Thursday.

China has reacted furiously to any suggestions that the pandemic, which has killed at least 4.3 million people since emerging in the city of Wuhan in December 2019, was caused by malpractice involving one of its laboratories.

But this is part of the "probable" assumptions, according to the head of the World Health Organization mission to investigate the origins of the pandemic.

"An employee (of a laboratory) infected in the field taking samples falls under one of the likely hypotheses. This is where the virus passes directly from bats to humans," Peter Embarek told the Danish public channel TV2

In a documentary broadcast on Thursday, the head of the delegation of international scientists sent by the WHO to Wuhan is very critical of China.

The first phase of the WHO study, conducted at the start of the year, concluded on March 29 that the hypothesis of a laboratory incident remained "extremely unlikely".

However, Embarek said it had been difficult for his team to discuss this theory with Chinese scientists.

Just 48 hours before the end of the mission, they had still not agreed to mention the laboratory thesis in the report, he said in the documentary.

It was after these exchanges that the WHO delegation won permission to visit two laboratories where research is carried out on bats, he said.

During these visits, "we had the right to make a presentation, then we were able to speak and ask the questions that we wanted to ask, but we did not have the opportunity to consult any documentation", Embarek said.

The scientist also pointed out that none of the type of bats suspected to have been the reservoir for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 live in the wild in the Wuhan region.

The only people likely to have approached these types of bats are employees of the city laboratories, he said.

The WHO on Thursday urged China to share raw data from the earliest Covid-19 cases to assist the pandemic origins probe -- and release data to address the lab leak theory.

The global health agency also urged all countries to depoliticise the search for the origins of the pandemic.

China rejects need for further WHO coronavirus origins probe
Beijing (AFP) Aug 13, 2021 - China on Friday rejected the World Health Organization's calls for a renewed probe into the origins of Covid-19, saying it supported "scientific" over "political" efforts to find out how the virus started.

Pressure is once more mounting on Beijing to consider a fresh probe into the orgins of a pandemic which has killed more than four million people and paralysed economies worldwide since it first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

A delayed and heavily politicised vist by a WHO team of international experts went to Wuhan in January 2021 to produce a first phase report, which was written in conjunction with their Chinese counterparts. It failed to conclude how the virus began.

On Thursday the WHO urged China to share raw data from the earliest Covid-19 cases to revive its probe into the origins of the disease.

China hit back, repeating its position that the initial investigation was enough and that calls for further data were motivated by politics instead of scientific inquiry.

"We oppose political tracing ... and abandoning the joint report" issued after the WHO expert team's Wuhan visit in January, vice foreign minister Ma Zhaoxu told reporters. "We support scientific tracing."

That report said the virus jumping from bats to humans via an intermediate animal was the most probable scenario, while a leak from Wuhan's virology labs was "extremely unlikely".

Ma rejected suggestions of new lines of investigation.

"The conclusions and recommendations of WHO and China joint report were recognised by the international community and the scientific community," he said.

"Future global traceability work should and can only be further carried out on the basis of this report, rather than starting a new one."

- Lab leak theory -

In the face of China's reluctance to open up to outside investigators, experts are increasingly open to considering the theory that the virus might have leaked out of a lab, once dismissed as a conspiracy propagated by the US far-right.

Even WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said that the initial probe into Wuhan's virology labs had not gone far enough, while President Joe Biden in May ordered a separate investigation into the virus origins from the US intelligence community.

A WHO call last month for the investigation's second stage to include audits of the Wuhan labs infuriated Beijing, with vice health minister Zeng Yixin saying the plan showed "disrespect for common sense and arrogance towards science".

Meanwhile, Danish scientist Peter Ben Embarek, who led the international mission to Wuhan, said a lab employee infected while taking samples in the field falls under one of the likely hypotheses as to how the virus passed from bats to humans.

He told the Danish public channel TV2 that the suspect bats were not from the Wuhan region and the only people likely to have approached them were workers from the Wuhan labs.

Ben Embarek previously acknowledged in an interview with Science magazine that "politics was always in the room with us" during the Wuhan trip, which was mired in delays after China initially stalled approval for the international researchers' entry.

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