The US report on origins tracing of COVID-19 can at best produce a "political virus," said a Nigerian expert, urging a science-backed endeavor and global collaboration on this issue.

"The COVID-19 pandemic is too serious and of tremendous global concerns for its origins tracing to be trivialized by politically cooked up innuendoes designed mostly to serve ideological purposes," said Charles Onunaiju, director of the Abuja-based Center for China Studies, was quoted Tuesday by Nigerian local daily The Nation as saying.