#Biden’s renewed Wuhan lab probe ‘political manipulation’

​The Chinese Communist Party blasted President Biden’s decision to renew the investigation into whether the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab as “political manipulation” and one that “does not care about facts and truth.” 

Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, speaking at a press conference in Beijing on Thursday, said the US “does not care about facts and truth, nor is it interested in serious scientific origin tracing.”

“Some people in the United States claim they want the truth, but their real intention is political manipulation,” Zhao said.

He also attempted to accuse the US of covering up its response to the pandemic and called for a renewed probe to examine America’s role especially at a biomedical research facility in Fort Detrick, Md.​

“The U.S. side claims that it wants China to participate in a comprehensive, transparent, evidence-based international investigation,” Zhao said. “We would like to ask the US side to do the same as China and immediately cooperate with the World Health Organization on origin tracing research in a scientific manner.”

After months of minimizing the theory that the pandemic may have originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology instead of through animal-to-human transmission at a Wuhan market, President Biden announced on Wednesday that he directed the intelligence community to do a 90-day investigation.

“As of today, the US Intelligence Community has ‘coalesced around two likely scenarios’ but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question,” Biden said.

The ​theory that the deadly virus began at the ​Wuhan lab ​took on heightened emphasis when the Wall Street Journal reported this week that three workers at the lab were hospitalized in the fall of 2019 after they had symptoms “consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.”​

The first reports of the coronavirus outbreak came from Wuhan in December 2019.​

Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have repeatedly claimed that the virus could have leaked from the lab. 

​In an interview Tuesday, Trump said it was obvious that the coronavirus originated in the lab.

“I had no doubt about it,” Trump told Newsmax. “I was criticized by the press because China has a lot of people taken care of. They took care of Hunter [Biden]. They took care of Joe. They took care of everybody, didn’t they? And people didn’t want to say China. Usually, they blame it on Russia. It’s always Russia, Russia, Russia, but I said right at the beginning it came out of Wuhan.”

Zhao Lijian has a history of trying to pin blame for the global pandemic on the United States to deflect attention from the Chinese Communist Party.

Zhao claimed in March, 2020, that the US military might have brought the virus to Wuhan.

“When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!” Zhao tweeted in English in one of a series of tweets critical of the US.

Twitter slapped warning labels on two other similar tweets of Zhao’s in May, 2020, after being confronted about the spread of disinformation on the platform by The Post.

In one tweet, Zhao linked to an article and wrote: “This article is very much important to each and every one of us. Please read and retweet it. COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US.”

In the other, Zhao wrote: “CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”

Both tweets now have a warning directing readers to click through to “Get the facts about COVID-19.”

With Post Wires