China has denied entry to a team from the World Health Organisation (WHO) who was visiting to study the origins of Covid-19, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

The delay to the WHO mission comes after months of planning and coordination between Chinese officials and the international team that is made up of 10 experts.

According to Axios, it took almost a year for China to agree to the mission investigating the Covid-19 origins.

"Very disappointed" to learn that team was not allowed entry into China

At a press conference in Geneva held on Wednesday, Jan. 6, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said they learned that Chinese officials have yet to finalise "the necessary permissions for the team's arrival in China".

In a rare critique of the country, he said: "I'm very disappointed with this news, given that two members had already begun their journeys and others were not able to travel at the last minute, but had been in contact with senior Chinese officials."

He added that he had "made it clear" with Chinese officials that the task was a priority for WHO, and said he was "assured" that they are speeding up the internal procedures for "the earliest possible deployment".

The team was set to visit the Chinese city of Wuhan, which was widely thought to be the place where Covid-19 first emerged in 2019.

WHO's emergencies chief, Michael Ryan, said they hope the issue is just "a logistical and bureaucratic" one that can be "resolved very quickly".

China says it is cooperating fully with WHO

The development appears to contradict what Chinese Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Hua Chunying said previously on Jan. 4 at a regular press conference.

Hua said that China "attaches great importance to communication and cooperation with WHO", and that it has been "firmly supporting and coordinating with WHO on its relevant work".

China stepping up narrative on Covid-19 origins

She also doubled down on the narrative that the country has been pushing for which put forth the theory that Covid-19 originated elsewhere, and not China.

"More and more evidence or research suggests that the pandemic was likely to have been caused by separate outbreaks in multiple places in the world in the latter half of the year 2019," she said.

Since early last year, China has ramped up its narrative that Covid-19 originated outside of its borders, supporting theories that it came from the United States, and even Southeast Asia.

Recent findings that surfaced since then have further complicated the world's understanding of the virus origins.

A discovery by scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), had revealed that the virus was spreading among the American population as early as two weeks before the official confirmation of the outbreak in Wuhan on Dec. 31, 2020.

China has been criticised, mostly by the U.S., for an alleged cover-up that botched its initial response to the Covid-19 outbreak.

U.S. President Donald Trump has also threatened to withdraw the country from WHO unless "it can demonstrate independence from China".

China has rejected such allegations, defending its handling of the outbreak and saying it has been sharing information with WHO in a timely manner.

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Top image via WHO/YouTube