China's foreign ministry comments on upcoming COVID-19 origins report

BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Relevant novel coronavirus source tracing work has been carried out by Chinese and international experts, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday.

Spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the remarks at a press briefing in response to reports that a World Health Organization spokesperson on Tuesday said that the international expert team that visited China to conduct COVID-19 origin-tracing study may release a research report next week.

The main conclusions, findings and recommendations of the joint source tracing study were already announced by Chinese and international experts at a joint press conference on Feb. 9, he said.

According to Zhao, after China and the WHO agreed on the work task in July last year, China arranged for a large number of institutions and personnel to carry out data collection, collation and analysis based on the suggestions of international experts.

"Experts from both sides undertook a joint analysis of the data during the joint origins tracing," he noted.