WHO team heading to China as politics weigh on search for Covid-19 origin
- They will meet officials from Chinese science and technology ministry and National Health Commission this weekend
- Talks will be a precursor to international inquiry that has been a point of contention
The health body has said the team will comprise two officials, which it did not name, who will meet counterparts at China’s Ministry of Science and Technology and National Health Commission. The meetings are a precursor to an international mission to be led by the WHO at a later unspecified date.
“We need to lay out a series of investigations that will get the answers that I’m sure the Chinese government, governments around the world, and ourselves really need in order to manage the risk going forward into the future,” said executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme Mike Ryan in a regular press briefing on Tuesday.
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‘We cannot beat this virus with ideologies’ - World Health Organisation
The focus will be on understanding how the virus, first identified in China more than six months ago, jumped from animals into humans on its way to becoming a pandemic that has killed over 500,000 people and infected more than 11 million. It has also triggered the worst diplomatic spat in decades between Washington and Beijing, blowing the lid off simmering tensions from trade and Taiwan to control of the South China Sea.
In the process, Washington was so angered by the WHO and what it called the organisation’s pandering to China as the outbreak spread, it pulled funding. On Tuesday, the United Nations said in a statement that the US had said it will withdraw entirely from the WHO on July 6 next year.
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Coronavirus: A look inside China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology
An international inquiry into the origins of the virus – and what form such an investigation should take – has been a point of contention and argument.
