MANILA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- A Philippine columnist urged his government and Filipino netizens to jump on the bandwagon to stop the politicization of the COVID-19 origin study, according to a recent article published online by Sovereign PH.
"It is the height of injustice for the U.S. and some of its allies to continue to politicize the issues and evade their responsibilities, while pestering and conspiring against China," said Herman Tiu Laurel, the columnist, on Friday.
China has provided hundreds of millions of vaccines to the developing world, "championed the lifting of vaccine patent rights, delivered vaccines on the 'global public good' basis and added 3 billion U.S. dollars just recently for anti-COVID-19 relief to developing countries," he said.
He slammed the United States for delaying completion of the COVID-19 virus studies "by its politicking with the issue and paying lip-service to patent waivers for vaccines, while hypocritically promising millions of vaccines that never completely arrive."
The columnist urged the Philippines to launch an official government communication to the World Health Organization (WHO) "supporting the petition of the 55 countries to de-politicize the handling of the virus origin inquiries."
He also proposed an online petition to be signed by netizens for the WHO to open inquiries into the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
"While China has shown it has nothing to hide by opening the city of Wuhan, its suspected market epicenter, and its virology institute to the WHO international team, the U.S. is not only uninviting but is aggressively applying 'weapons of mass distraction' and smoke-screening Fort Detrick from questions by steering attention back to China with the false narrative of a 'Wuhan lab-leak' conspiracy theory," he added. Enditem