As the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that new and more dangerous coronavirus variants were expected to spread around the world, it urged China to be more co-operative with the second phase of its investigation into the origins of Covid-19.
WHO director Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for more access and transparency from China, according to the BBC.
He told reporters that it was far too soon to rule out the possibility of the ‘lab leak’ theory of the origin of Covid-19.
This hypothesis suggests that the Wuhan institute of virology in China accidently released Covid-19 into the global population while researchers were studying coronaviruses at the institute.
Tedros said that getting access to raw data from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had been a major problem for the WHO.
Tedros said there was a premature effort to rule out the theory, a sentiment which runs counter to the WHO’s own report on the origin of Covid-19 released in March of this year.
The first phase of the WHO’s investigation ended in February, concluding that it was highly unlikely that the virus came from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and that it probably originated in bats.
But this week, Dr Tedros said the WHO now needed access to raw patient data from just before and at the start of the pandemic.
He also called for clear information about the laboratory in Wuhan, stating that as a medical professional himself, he knew accidents could happen.
The BBC said this was the strongest indication yet that the WHO was still considering the lab leak theory, despite its experts saying this was unlikely.
Speculation about a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology – one of China’s top virus research labs – began last year.
The Biden administration has ordered U.S. intelligence services to conduct their own investigation of the theory.
The PRC has hit back aggressively at the theory, describing it as without merit.
Meanwhile, the WHO’s emergency committee said that new and more dangerous variants were expected to spread around the world.
‘The pandemic is nowhere near finished,’ the committee warned in a statement.
The BBC quoted committee chairman Didier Houssin as saying that ‘we are still running after this virus and the virus is still running after us’.
[Image: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay]