Coronavirus: WHO team to scrap interim report on China mission to investigate Covid-19 origins, according to US media
- The probe had been plagued by delays and bickering between Beijing and Washington, which accused China of hiding the extent of the initial outbreak
- A group of international scientists is calling for a new, independent investigation to nail down whether the virus came from an animal or a lab
A World Health Organization team investigating the origins of Covid-19 is planning to scrap an interim report on its recent mission to China amid mounting tensions between Beijing and Washington over the investigation and an appeal from one international group of scientists for a new probe, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
In Geneva, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said in an email reply: “The full report is expected in coming weeks”.
No further information was immediately available about the reasons for the delay in publishing the findings of the WHO-led mission to the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first human cases of Covid-19 were detected in late 2019.
China refused to give raw data on early Covid-19 cases to a WHO-led team probing the origins of the pandemic, Dominic Dwyer, one of the team’s investigators said last month, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began.
The probe had been plagued by delays, concern over access and bickering between Beijing and Washington, which accused China of hiding the extent of the initial outbreak and criticised the terms of the visit, under which Chinese experts conducted the first phase of research.
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WHO ends Covid-19 mission in Wuhan, says lab leak ‘extremely unlikely’
The team, which arrived in China in January and spent four weeks looking into the origins of the outbreak, was limited to visits organised by their Chinese hosts and prevented from contact with community members, due to health restrictions. The first two weeks were spent in hotel quarantine.
The controversy over the investigation heated up on Thursday as a group of scientists called for an independent probe to consider all hypotheses and nail down whether the virus came from an animal.
A group of more than 20 signatories said in an open letter published by The Wall Street Journal that the existing mission was not independent enough and demanded a new probe to consider all possibilities over the origin. Half of the joint team are Chinese citizens whose scientific independence may be limited, they said.
Coronavirus origins report has a lot riding on it, global health experts say
Last month, the mission rejected speculation that the coronavirus could have leaked from a lab and said instead that it may have jumped to humans through an animal host or frozen wildlife products. WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus later said the United Nations agency has not ruled out any hypotheses.
The WHO has faced criticism since the outbreak of the pandemic that it’s been too deferential to China. Former US president Donald Trump advanced the theory that the virus might have escaped from a high-security virology lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the virus was first detected.
The scientists who signed the open letter included the lab scenario among the possibilities. Signatories include Steven Quay, chief executive officer at Atossa Therapeutics Inc., which develops treatments for breast cancer and Covid-19, while Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, co-organised the letter.
None of the signatories were members of the WHO-backed mission.
Reuters and Bloomberg
