The Director General of WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Highlight
- WHO chief says most likely explanation for Covid was a catastrophic accident at a laboratory in Wuhan
- Publicly, the UN health agency says that “all hypotheses remain on the table”.
- At the start of Covid, WHO was criticized for its respectful approach towards China
According to a report, just days after saying that the Covid lab leak theory needs “further investigation”, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has privately acknowledged to a senior European politician that the pandemic is in China. originated from the infamous Wuhan Lab.
The most likely explanation was a catastrophic accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, where the infection first spread in late 2019, according to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Daily Mail reported.
However, publicly, the UN health agency maintains that “all hypotheses remain on the table”.
The WHO was initially criticized for its respectful approach to China, but in the absence of any compelling evidence of a “zoonotic” outbreak – the process by which a virus makes the jump from animals to humans – the global agency is now looking for a more neutral Adopting the public. stance, the report said.
“We don’t yet have the answer to where it came from or how it entered the human population. Understanding the origin of the virus is very important scientifically to prevent future pandemics and pandemics,” Ghebreyesus was quoted as saying in this month’s report. was cited as
“But morally, we are also indebted to all those who have suffered and died and their families. The longer it takes, the harder it becomes. We need to act fast and act with urgency.” need to.
He said, “All hypotheses must remain on the table until we have evidence that enables us to rule in or out certain hypotheses. This makes it all the more urgent that this scientific work should be politicized.” be kept separate.”
The origin of COVID remains a subject of political and scientific debate with scientists and politicians globally saying that the coronavirus jumped from bats to people, or leaked from a laboratory. The WHO said in its initial assessment that it was “extremely impossible” that the Covid spread from a laboratory to humans, but the agency later acknowledged flaws in the report and ordered a new investigation.
In a recent report, by the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), the expert panel set up by the WHO in 2021 to research the causes behind the pandemic, shared that “key pieces of data are yet to be completed”. How the Covid-19 pandemic started”.
However, reports suggest that the virus may have come from animals, possibly bats. But it also did not rule out the possibility of lab leaks, citing a lack of clear data.
Meanwhile, WHO experts, including the SAGO panel, have said that China is not cooperating in the Kovid original investigation. Ghebreyesus called for “full cooperation from all countries, including China, where the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 were reported”.
China, on its part, has been protesting from the start that the lab leak claims were just a “conspiracy theory”. It has also claimed that the virus originated in America.
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