The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) declared himself willing to send a new mission of experts to China to discover the origins of Covid-19, calling for “full access”, in an interview with the Financial Times.
“We are pressing China to provide full access and we are asking countries to raise the issue in their bilateral meetings (to encourage Beijing to cooperate),” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the Financial Times.
“The WHO has already asked China, in writing, to provide information and we are willing to send a team, if they authorize us to do so,” he explained.
To date, the international community has not been able to determine with certainty the origin of Covid.
Although, initially, the first cases were detected at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China, there are two competing theories: a leak from a laboratory in the city where these viruses were studied, or an intermediary animal that infected people who attended a market. local.
A team of experts led by the WHO and accompanied by Chinese colleagues carried out research in China in early 2021.
In a joint report, they supported the hypothesis that the highly contagious virus was transmitted to humans by an animal acting as an intermediary between the bat and humans, possibly in a market in the Chinese city.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus later stated that “all hypotheses remain on the table.”
Neither team was able to return to China, and WHO officials repeatedly requested additional data.
The WHO director general has stated on several occasions that the WHO has no intention of abandoning the investigation and has repeatedly called on Beijing to “be transparent in sharing data, carrying out necessary research and sharing the results.”
Thanks to vaccines, immunity acquired after infection and better treatments, the virus is now much more controlled, although, with the arrival of autumn, infections are increasing again in the northern hemisphere and new variants have emerged.
Source: TSF
