US President Joe Biden has ordered the US intelligence community to study the origin of coronavirus and adding that it will continue to press for China to participate in a full probe. Later China blasts the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis as a conspiracy theory. Munia Iffat reports.

• Beijing has responded to US President Joe Biden’s announcement of an investigation into Covid-19 origins by denouncing the “lab leak” hypothesis as a conspiracy theory and urging a probe into secret US bio-labs around the world.
• China has been calling for international cooperation to trace the origins of Covid-19 “on the idea of respecting facts and science, with a view to raised dealing with unexpected epidemics in the future,” the statement said. Politicizing the probe will make it “hard to find the origin of the virus” but also “seriously hamper International cooperation on the pandemic.”
• The announcement of Biden’s come one day after a media reported that the US president killed a Trump-era probe into whether the virus started in a Wuhan lab. Later Joe Biden ordered a new analysis of how Covid-19 originated and said he will press China for transparency.
• Biden said in a statement on Wednesday, “I have now asked the Intelligence Community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that would bring us closer to a definitive conclusion and report back to me in 90 days.”  He added that other agencies, including US National Labs will contribute to the study, which may include “specific questions for China.”

Meanwhile, Facebook informs it will stop banning claims coronavirus is man-made, citing ‘new facts and trends.’