German Chancellor Angela Merkel urges China to be more transparent about the origin of coronavirus

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday urged China to be as transparent as possible about the origin of the novel coronavirus according to media reports.

"I believe the more transparent China is about the origin story of the virus, the better it is for everyone in the world in order to learn from it,” Merkel said as quoted by AFP .

Germany is not the only nation to request more transparency from China about the origin of Covid-19 and its handling of the virus.

Australia’s Foreign Minister, Marise Payne on Sunday called for a global inquiry into the origin of the coronavirus and China’s handling of it in an interview with ABC Insiders .

Payne had asked for an independent review to be set up by countries for better understanding the “genesis” of coronavirus as it will further help them in strategising how to deal with the virus. She also called for an independent review of the transparency with which information was shared about the virus.

China has been drawing flak from countries across the globe, majorly from the US in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. French President Emmanuel Macron last week had said that it was “naive” to think that China had managed the pandemic well and that there were certain things that had happened which the world didn’t know about, the Financial Times reported.

In another instance, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab had said that China will face "hard questions" related to the outbreak, specifically about its origin and China’s handling of it.

China on Monday had rejected US President Donald Trump’s demand to probe the origin of the virus by sending an investigation team to Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak claiming that it was a victim of the virus and not the culprit. It had also rejected Payne’s call for an independent review of the origin of the outbreak as per media reports.

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