WASHINGTON - China is lashing out at the chief of the World Health Organization for suggesting that more study is needed into the possibility that the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic initially escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

Global Times, an influential news outlet controlled by China's ruling Communist Party, pointed this week to comments by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Ethiopian-born director-general of the WHO, to the effect "that further investigation is needed on the hypothesis of a 'lab leak' being the origin of COVID-19."