Int'l community should focus on ending COVID-19, rather than virus origin tracing: media

DAKAR, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) -- There is a compelling need for the international community to focus on finding solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than the origin of the virus, Senegalese newspaper Le Soleil said in an article recently.

In the article published earlier this week, the author, Senegalese journalist Amadou Diop, said that the future of mankind and world economy deserves a switch of opinion to focus on solutions to ending the pandemic and what would follow afterwards "because the post-pandemic could be a difficult equation to balance," he said.

Diop called on people to take a closer look at the real motivations of the United States "that always seek to attribute the origin of the virus to a human work, that of China."

"Doesn't the priority remain the fight, the promotion of barrier gestures and international solidarity to come to the end of this pandemic!" Diop stressed in his article.

According to him, the international community should not doubt the good faith of China, because China has allowed a visit to its territory of international experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) as part of the research aimed at identifying the origin of the virus.

Diop said the WHO experts, in collaboration with China, "substantially" excluded the accusation fabricated by the United States that the virus came from a laboratory leak.

"They also came to a conclusion that it was 'extremely unlikely' that the virus came from a lab, and favored the track of a natural contamination by animals," he added.

He believed that the pandemic that "has shaken and continues to disrupt human life and the world economy," should not be taken as an excuse for waging a competitive war.

Diop stressed that the right thing to do should be to "coordinate efforts and lead an active global solidarity against this pandemic. Something that China is doing with its all-out support in medical inputs, vaccines and various health materials for the world, particularly to developing countries, the COVAX initiative and the African Union."

China and the United States share great interests in working and collaborating together to tackle COVID-19, as well as all the other issues concerning the future of the world, said Diop.