WHO chief says agency will ‘continue to push’ to uncover Covid’s origins
- Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says it is ‘scientifically correct and morally correct’ to pursue investigation into how pandemic started
- The remarks come amid reports that the UN health body has abandoned probe because of challenges in conducting studies in China
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China’s foreign ministry pushed back against the Nature report, saying the country has “always supported and participated in global scientific origin tracing”.
In a briefing on Wednesday, Wang said the country had received WHO experts to cooperate on tracing the origins of the virus and shared research findings with the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins on Novel Pathogens (Sago), an expert committee to study the origin of Covid-19 and emerging diseases.
“China has shared more data and research findings on Sars-CoV-2 origins study than any other country. This fully demonstrates China’s open, transparent and responsible attitude and its support for the work of the WHO and Sago,” Wang said.
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Tedros said the agency sent a letter to a “top official in China” to ask for cooperation seven weeks ago.
The WHO-China report concluded that zoonotic spread was the likeliest scenario for the origin of the virus, but did not find evidence for how it spread to humans.
Tedros later suggested the controversial report did not contain an “extensive enough” assessment of the lab leak theory.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead for Covid-19, was quoted by Nature as saying “there is no phase two”. However, she clarified during the Wednesday briefing that the “WHO has not abandoned studying the origins of Covid-19. We have not. And we will not”.
“Initially, phase two was a plan to be a continuation of that January 2021 mission to Wuhan, which was in a sense seen as phase one. But we updated our plans … in a sense phase two became Sago.”
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Van Kerkhove said the agency continued to ask for more cooperation and collaboration from Beijing to “advance studies that need to take place in China”.
“Studies of the animal-human interface, on markets, on farms – these studies need to be conducted in China and we need cooperation with our colleagues there to advance our understanding,” she said.
Foreign ministry spokesman Wang said the WHO and Sago should take a close look at “clues from the international science community” pointing to Covid-19 sources around the world and US military laboratories.