Around this time time last year, China thought it had escaped blame for the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which began on its soil.
At the World Health Assembly — the annual forum for World Health Organization member states — in May 2020, dozens of countries were meant to vote on a draft motion, led by Australia, to start an investigation meant to hold China to account.
But China outplayed the world on the day, with its diplomats securing instead a watered-down draft motion that called only for a review on “lessons learned,” without apportioning blame. President Xi Jinping promised an investigation of sorts, but framed it in a way that shielded China from blowback.
After delays, the WHO sent a team of experts to Wuhan, the Chinese city where the novel coronavirus was first found, to investigate where the virus came from.
In a victory for China the WHO team said it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus had leaked from a Wuhan lab, seeming to put another nail in the coffin of what was then mostly dismissed as a conspiracy theory.
China appeared to have got off lightly, and other nations were preoccupied dealing with their own urgent outbreaks, almost totally absent from China itself by 2021.
But, months later, the tide is turning.
The lab-leak theory has gained new traction in recent weeks, with The Wall Street Journal uncovering last month a US intelligence report that said that three employees at the Wuhan Institute of Virology got sick more than a month before experts found the first COVID-19 cases.
Days after The Journal’s report, President Joe Biden ordered a new investigation from the US intelligence community into the origins of the virus. Biden gave a 90-day deadline to conclude the probe, meaning a report can be expected in late August.