German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged China to come clean on coronavirus outbreak, as pressure grows on Beijing and its management of the crises.?
China has been accused of downplaying the impact of the virus when it first emerged in the country late last year, while conspiracy theories of COVID-19 been leaked from a lab in Wuhan refuse to die down.
Merkel urged for more information about the early days of the outbreak, which originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
"I believe the more transparent China is about the origin story of the virus, the better it is for everyone in the world in order to learn from it," Merkel told reporters in Berlin Monday.
Chinese scientists say the virus was likely first transmitted to humans at a wet market where wild animals were sold.
Unproven theories that the virus came from a maximum-security virology lab in Wuhan have been raised by US officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who has said an investigation was under way into how the virus "got out into the world".
Chinese authorities have been accused of initially downplaying the outbreak and last week authorities in Wuhan admitted mistakes in counting their death toll and revised the figure up by 50 percent.??
Globally, more than 2.4 million people have been diagnosed with the coronavirus while more than 170,000 have died, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. More than 646,000 people have recovered.