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Chinese health officials pushed Wednesday to expand the search for the origins of the coronavirus beyond China, one day after the release of a closely watched World Health Organization report on the issue. They also rejected criticism that China did not give enough data to a WHO team of international experts that visited Wuhan, the Chinese city where the first cases were detected, earlier this year. The search for the origins of the virus has become a diplomatic feud. The U.S. and other Western nations have repeatedly raised questions about delays, transparency and data access, while China has promoted theories that suggest the virus may have come from elsewhere. (Moritsugu, 3/31)

A WHO-led team that visited China earlier this year to explore the pandemic’s origins concluded in a report published Tuesday that the coronavirus was “extremely unlikely” to have leaked from a Chinese laboratory and recommended no further study of that possibility. However, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said shortly before the report’s release that the team’s assessment of a potential lab leak hadn’t been extensive enough and that further investigation was needed, adding he was ready to deploy more specialists to study that possibility. (Page and Hinshaw, 3/31)

Before COVID-19, few scientists would have pegged the Chinese city of Wuhan, in temperate central China, as a likely starting point for a global coronavirus pandemic. Its climate and fauna don't fit the bill. But the city of 11 million straddling the Yangtze River is home to some of China's most advanced biological research laboratories. And one of the secretive, state-run institutions, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is known to conduct experiments on exactly the kind of virus that has killed nearly 3 million people worldwide so far since late 2019. (Ruwitch, 3/31)