Last Updated: April 07, 2023, 01:09 IST
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus famous that the world is in a significantly better place now that at any time within the pandemic, which simply entered its fourth 12 months. (Photo Credit: Reuters)
More than three years after Covid-19 first surfaced, heated debate nonetheless rages across the origins of the pandemic
The World Health Organization stated Thursday it was positive China had much more knowledge that would shed gentle on the origins of Covid, demanding Beijing instantly share all related data.
“Without full entry to the data that China has… all hypotheses are on the desk,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva.
“That’s why we have been asking China to be cooperative on this,” he stated, insisting that if Beijing does present the lacking knowledge “we’ll know what occurred or the way it began”.
More than three years after Covid-19 first surfaced, heated debate still rages around the origins of the pandemic.
The issue has proved divisive for the scientific community and even different US government agencies, which are split between a theory that the virus jumped naturally to humans from animals and one maintaining that the virus likely leaked from a Wuhan laboratory — a claim China has angrily denied.
Late last month, new evidence emerged that raccoon dogs, known to be able to carry and transmit viruses similar to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid, were at a market in Wuhan when the disease was first detected in humans.
The researchers who unexpectedly stumbled over the genetic data say that it supports — but cannot definitively prove — the theory that the virus originated in animals, possibly first jumping over to humans at the market.
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19, told journalists Thursday that the new information provided “clues”, however no clear solutions, insisting that the info “collected in January and February 2020, greater than three years in the past” should have been shared long ago.
“Without information, without data to make a proper assessment, it’s very difficult for us to give a concrete answer. And in the present time, we don’t have a concrete answer of how the pandemic began,” she stated.
– ‘Not a game’ –
But she voiced certainty that China’s “unbelievable scientists” had conducted far more studies and collected much more data that could be relevant in the search.
“We know there is more information that’s out there,” she stated.
“We want scientists, public well being professionals and governments to share this data. This isn’t a sport.”
In an editorial in Science magazine published Thursday, Van Kerkhove said she believed China had data that it had not shared including on the wild and farmed animal trade at the Wuhan market, the testing of humans and animals in Wuhan and across China, and operations of labs in Wuhan working on coronaviruses.
“Lab audit data exist and have not been shared, for example,” she wrote, demanding that China share all knowledge on the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid “instantly”.
Tedros stressed the vital importance of getting to the bottom of the mystery, pointing out that determining Covid origins could help avert future pandemics.
And with nearly seven million deaths officially registered in the pandemic — with the real toll believed to be several times higher — he said there was a “moral imperative”.
“We must know the reply, past affordable doubt.”
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(This story has not been edited by News18 workers and is printed from a syndicated information company feed)
