Tedros calls for new investigation to exclude Wuhan lab as source of Covid
The World Health Organization report on the origin of the pandemic has been published. Transmission from animal to human remains the most probable hypothesis. The WHO chief reveals that the Chinese have not provided all the data. US government: Beijing must guarantee full access to investigators.
Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - More investigations are needed to rule out that the Covid-19 pandemic has spread from a laboratory in Wuhan (Hubei), where the disease first appeared at the end of 2019.
World Health Organization (WHO) director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the move yesterday, presenting the results of the investigation conducted in China by a WHO investigative team, called to discover the origin of the coronavirus.
Tedros reiterated the preliminary findings of the group of experts in January: that the most probable hypothesis is that of the transmission of the disease from an "intermediate" species (a bat) to humans.
The WHO report states that it is very unlikely that the virus spread due to an accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. However, it adds that to dispel any doubt, a team of specialists need to deepen the study.
The WHO chief specified that all options remain on the table. He pointed out that the investigators did not have access to all the raw data. For the new investigations, Tedros asked Beijing to share the requested information in a more complete and timely manner.
The Chinese regime has always ruled out the "leak from the laboratory" theory. Chinese state media have advanced the hypothesis that Covid arrived in Wuhan through frozen food imported from abroad.
Analysts note the different tone used by Tedros towards the Chinese government. Since the outbreak of the pandemic between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, the WHO has often been accused of covering up China, guilty according to many countries of having lied about the spread of the coronavirus.
Former US President S President Donald Trump termed Tedros a "puppet" in the hands of Beijing. He was accused of collusion with the Chinese authorities in lying and delaying the declaration on human-to-human transmissibility of the virus, on the declaration of world emergency, accepting that his experts did not go to Wuhan at the beginning of the pandemic.
In response to the WHO report, Washington and 13 other governments (including those of Australia, Japan, South Korea and Israel) expressed concern at the results presented. They are calling on China to grant full access to investigators. From the beginning, several observers questioned the effectiveness of the mission in Wuhan: the group of experts had to follow a program of visits established by the Chinese government, without having full access to the original data and without being able to communicate freely with each other and with reporters.
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28/01/2021 15:48
19/05/2020 11:09
