A Chinese ambassador to the United Nations says the country will not accept an international COVID-19 investigation until the pandemic is defeated in its country, Newsweek reported.
"The top priority, for the time being, is to focus on the fight against the pandemic until we win the final victory," Amb. Chen Xu told Newsweek. "We need the right focus and allocation of our resources.
"It's not that we are allergic to any kind of investigations, inquiries or evaluations. We need to race with time to save lives as much as we can."
The U.S., Australia, and Germany have been leading a call for transparency on the behalf of China for its role in unleashing the global coronavirus pandemic.
The World Health Organization has not been invited in to date either.
"For whether or how the invitation will take place, we need to have the right priority setting at this moment, and on the other hand, we need the right atmosphere," Chen told Newsweek.
The United States has said it has convincing intelligence the coronavirus was unleashed from a Wuhan Institute of Virology lab accident and not that wet market nearby as China had originally reported.
The politicization of the global health crisis has struck Chen as "absurd and ridiculous," he told Newsweek.