After US government officials suggested that the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic was probably due to an incident in a laboratory in China, the World Health Organization (WHO) demanded that the governments of the United States and other countries share the information they have about the origin of the disease.
The matter came to light in recent days, when the American newspaper Wall Street Journal (WSJ) released, at the end of February, information based on a confidential intelligence document that was delivered by the Department of Energy of the US government to the White House and to members of Congress, and after the statement by the director of the FBI (American federal police), Christopher Wray, that the pandemic was probably caused by the leak in a laboratory in Wuhan.
This Friday (3), WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that “if a country has information about the origins of the pandemic, it is essential that this information be shared with the WHO and the scientific community. International”.
According to the director of the WHO, the purpose of the request is not to “appoint blame”, but to allow the world to understand what happened, prevent a new pandemic or be prepared if it is inevitable.
Tedros clarified that the WHO “has not abandoned its plans to identify the origins of the covid-19 pandemic”. The WHO created in 2021 a scientific advisory group, made up of experts from different countries, to determine the origins of new pathogens, including the cause of covid.
The director-general of the WHO regretted the persistence of politicizing the investigations carried out to find out how the health emergency began, considering that this only makes the search for the truth more difficult.
China, on the other hand, rejected the FBI director’s comments and asked the United States to respect “the science and the facts”.
Investigations
Prior to the creation of the advisory group, a mission of scientists visited Wuhan a year after the start of the pandemic and carried out investigations there. And, although he did not come to definitive conclusions, he considered it unlikely that the pandemic started with a laboratory leak.
Subsequently, WHO advisors recommended a series of studies that could clarify the situation and that should be carried out in China and in other countries in order to verify or discard the different hypotheses related to the origin of Covid-19.
“We continue to ask China to be transparent and share information, to carry out the necessary investigations and share the results,” said Tedros, who emphasized that he had written or spoken several times with Chinese authorities in this regard.
The WHO official maintained that, until that happens, “all hypotheses about the origin of the virus remain on the table”.
#share #information #origin #Covid19