2021-07-29 03:05:27 GMT2021-07-29 11:05:27(Beijing Time) Xinhua English KATHMANDU, July 29 (Xinhua) -- Efforts to probe the origin of COVID-19 could be hamstrung by the politicization of the issue, with a conspiracy theory about lab leaks taking precedence over a scientific conclusion, Nepali health and foreign policy experts have said recently. "It is unfortunate that politics have muddled the issue of identifying the source of COVID-19," said Baburam Marasini, a former director of the Epidemiology and Disease Control Division under the Ministry of Health and Population. In a report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) in late March after a field study in China's Wuhan, it was concluded that a lab-leak explanation of the origin of the coronavirus was "extremely unlikely."