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Ryan wants China to lose 2022 Winter Olympics

Teamed with Republican to say country is blocking probe

WARREN — Democrat U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan wants China to lose out on hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics if the country won’t agree to participate in additional phases of a study the World Health Organization conducted on the origins of the COVID-19 virus.

The congressman, with fellow House member Mississippi Republican Steven Palazzo, is asking the International Olympic Committee “to bar China from hosting the 2022 Winter Olympic Games unless China cooperates fully,” the letter to the organization states.

Chinese health officials in July said the country cannot accept the WHO’s plan for a second phase of the study.

Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of the National Health Commission, said in July he was “rather taken aback” that the plan includes further investigation of the theory that the virus might have leaked from a Chinese lab.

He dismissed the lab leak idea as a rumor that runs counter to common sense and science.

Ryan and Palazzo state in their letter that the WHO “investigation” would include “audits of relevant laboratories and research institutions operating in the area of the initial human cases identified in December 2019” and animal markets.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of WHO, acknowledged in July that there had been a “premature push” after the first phase of the study to rule out the theory that the virus might have escaped from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan, the city where the disease was first detected in late 2019.

Most experts don’t think a lab leak is the likely cause. The question is whether the possibility is so remote that it should be dropped, or whether it merits further study.

The WHO team concluded that the virus most likely jumped from animals to humans, probably from bats to an intermediate animal. The experts visited markets in Wuhan that had sold live animals, and recommended further study of the farms that supplied the market.

Ryan said Thursday in a news conference that China has “no excuse” not to participate in the investigation.

“I think if you want to be a complete participant in the global community, if you want to be engaged economically with the global community, you have got to fully cooperate with the investigation,” Ryan said. “There is no excuse for them not to cooperate in this investigation, and, if they don’t cooperate they should not get such a significant honor, both culturally and economically, to host the winter Olympics of 2020.”

The next phase of the WHO study could lead to information that could aid efforts in future global pandemics, Ryan and Palazzo state.

The games are set to begin Feb. 4, and preparations are well underway.

Attempts to boycott the games unless China allows an investigation of complaints of human rights abuses in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where mass detentions and other abuses of mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are reported, have not stalled the games.

Ryan and Palazzo state the “longstanding persecution and human rights violations against” the Uighur people is enough to “warrant moving the 2022 winter games.” China rejects the accusations of abuses in Xinjiang.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ryan wants China to lose 2022 Winter Olympics

WARREN — Democrat U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan wants China to lose out on hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics if the country won’t agree to participate in additional phases of a study the World Health Organization conducted on the origins of the COVID-19 virus.

The congressmen, with fellow House member Mississippi Republican Steven Palazzo, is asking the International Olympic Committee “to bar China from hosting the 2022 Winter Olympic Games unless China cooperates fully,” the letter to the organization states.

Chinese health officials in July said the country cannot accept the WHO’s plan for a second phase of the study.

Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of the National Health Commission, said in July he was “rather taken aback” that the plan includes further investigation of the theory that the virus might have leaked from a Chinese lab.

He dismissed the lab leak idea as a rumor that runs counter to common sense and science.

Ryan and Palazzo state in their letter that the WHO “investigation” would include “audits of relevant laboratories and research institutions operating in the area of the initial human cases identified in December 2019” and animal markets.

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