In what should come as a shock to absolutely no one, the Chinese Communist Party rejected the World Health Organization’s second-phase study plan for investigating the origin of COVID-19. Recall that last week, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus admitted that his organization had been “premature” in its push to dismiss the lab leak theory as “extremely unlikely.” As we noted previously, the WHO was happy to tout Beijing’s dubious claims following its initial COVID origin investigation in which UN investigators essentially ruled out the possibility that the novel virus leaked from a Wuhan lab — a lab that just happened to be researching coronaviruses.

China’s vice minister of the National Health Commission, Zeng Yixin, asserted that he was “shocked” by the WHO’s request for greater access to the Wuhan lab and its research. “It is impossible for us to accept such an origin-tracing plan,” he stated.

Unsurprisingly, the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s biosafety lab, Yuan Zhiming, claimed, “I want to emphasize that … the Wuhan Institute of Virology has never designed, made or leaked the novel coronavirus.” Does anyone believe he would admit to anything else? This is a communist dictatorial regime that’s currently engaged in the systematic enslavement and genocide of more than a million Uyghur Muslims. It also has a long history of murderous oppression. It’s a good bet that Yuan doesn’t want to get suddenly “disappeared.”

In a further demonstration of the Chinese government’s lack of credibility, Beijing is still ridiculously reporting that the country’s death toll from COVID is only 4,636, a total that has remained unchanged for months.

Zeng contended that China’s refusal to allow access to the Wuhan lab was because “we are opposed to politicizing the tracing work.” That’s rich. No country has done more than China to politicize the novel virus, and it continues to do so, even pushing the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was a U.S. creation intentionally released in Wuhan. It’s awfully interesting that China now wants to push the natural origin theory as the only serious option to research.

Will the WHO continue to press and investigate the lab leak theory as part of its overall investigation into the origin of COVID? It may attempt to do so, but China is holding all the cards and has made its position clear. And since Beijing can control what and what does not get investigated within Wuhan, any evidence leading to scientific certainty for the origin of COVID will likely remain out of reach, as will serious efforts to hold China accountable for this devastating plague.