Covid-19, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2020, went on to kill millions of people, shred economies and overwhelm health systems.
The WHO published a statement on Monday saying it was a “moral and scientific imperative” for China to share more information.
In response, China defended its transparency, saying it had made the “largest contribution to global origin tracing research”.
“Five years ago… China immediately shared epidemic information and viral gene sequence with the WHO and the international community,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said.
“Without holding anything back, we shared our prevention, control and treatment experience,” she told reporters at a regular press briefing.
But over the course of the pandemic, the WHO repeatedly criticised Chinese authorities for their lack of transparency and cooperation.
A team of specialists led by the WHO and accompanied by Chinese colleagues conducted an investigation into the pandemic’s origins in early 2021.
In a joint report, they favoured the hypothesis that the virus had been transmitted by an intermediary animal from a bat to a human, possibly at a market.
