WHO pushes China in new Wuhan lab probe
The World Health Organisation is to restart its investigation into the origins of the coronavirus outbreak and will appoint a new team of experts with a mission to look for further evidence of how the virus emerged in China.
The new panel will include experts in laboratory safety, biosecurity and genetics, as well as animal disease specialists who are experts in how viruses spread to humans, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
The team will redouble efforts to establish whether the virus leaked from a laboratory
in Wuhan towards the end of 2019 before going on to kill more than 4.7 million people across the globe.
China denies the allegation and is demanding that the WHO investigates whether the virus originated in other countries, including the US.
The new WHO team, announced after Washington urged further investigation, comes after President Joe Biden ordered the US intelligence agencies to investigate the “lab leak” theory.
The White House had previously accepted China’s claim that Covid-19 jumped from bats to humans. A US report, published last month, was inconclusive, saying both theories were credible.
A WHO spokesman said the new team’s “priority needs to be data and access in the country where the first reports were identified”.
China has refused to say if the new team will be allowed into the country to conduct its investigation. The foreign ministry said that Beijing had “co-operated fully” with the previous inquiry, a point disputed by members of the last WHO team.
The earlier WHO investigation, run by 10 international experts who visited Wuhan, recommended that China further scrutinise the earliest suspected cases. It is not known whether Chinese officials carried out this work.
In its final report, the team said the data provided by the Chinese was insufficient to answer the critical questions of when, where and how the virus began spreading. It did conclude, however, that it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus escaped from a lab.
The decision to restart the inquiry is likely to anger Beijing, which is desperate to avoid being blamed for the outbreak. Senior members of the Biden administration have lobbied WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to begin a new probe.