MAPUTO - Origins tracing and research work of COVID-19 should be carried out based on laboratory samples collected around the world prior to its outbreak in 2019, said a Mozambican health expert.

"It is important to carry out investigations on samples stored for the last three or four years in laboratories in various parts of the world," said Eduardo Samo Gudo, deputy director of Mozambique's National Health Institute, in a recent interview with Xinhua, adding that samples extracted from animals should be included.

The health expert said the truth may never be reached if the process is jeopardized by politicization.

"When science is politicized, we lose all scientific content and insight, and scientific arguments are forgotten," said Gudo.

There have been many precedents where the first case was detected in one country but the zoonotic event (when the virus leaps from animal species to human) happened in another country, which is normal, explained Gudo.

"The important thing is not to politicize the matter, the investigation of the origin is a scientific, not a political issue," he said.