WHO Chief Insists China Should Help Solve The ‘Origin’ Of The Virus

WHO Chief Insists China Should Help Solve The ‘Origin’ Of The Virus.

WHO chief says the Wuhan Covid lab leak theory can’t be ruled out and insists China should help solve the ‘origin’ of the virus. Director-General of the WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, 56, urged more “transparency” from China in the ongoing investigation and suggested that Beijing had not fully co-operated.

The origins of Covid-19 have still not been established although two main theories have emerged – either from animal contact (bats) at a wet market in Wuhan or a leak from the research laboratory in the same Chinese city.

China has constantly stated it is not responsible for the global pandemic and repeatedly dismissed conspiracy theories that say the virus was made by humans.

US President Joe Biden last month ordered US intelligence agencies to report in the next three months on whether Covid-19 emerged from an animal or during a laboratory accident.

Dr Tedros, speaking at a G7 summit briefing, said the possibility of it coming from a lab leak hadn’t been ruled out and that “every hypothesis should be open”. He said that so far 3.75million people had died from the virus and at least 174m were confirmed to have contracted the disease.

A recent report by the WHO and Chinese experts judged the lab-leak hypothesis highly unlikely, saying the virus behind Covid-19 had probably jumped from bats to humans via an intermediary animal.

Ghebreyesus said that the international team had difficulty accessing raw data during the mission to China, demanding “more timely and comprehensive data-sharing” in the future.

The United States, together with a statement from 13 allies including Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and South Korea, voiced concern over the report and said that the mission to China “was significantly delayed and lacked access to complete, original data and samples”.

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As the coronavirus crisis was declared a pandemic, the WHO stressed the need to understand the origin of the virus in order to better understand the emergence of new pathogens and possible exposures.

It was only a few weeks into the outbreak that the IHR Emergency Committee of independent experts recommended that WHO and China pursue efforts to identify the animal source of the virus.

All throughout 2020, WHO continued to discuss with China and the other Member States the need to study and share information around the virus origins.

The World Health Assembly resolution of May 2020, which was adopted by all Member States, cited a need “to identify the zoonotic source”: