All countries must work together to investigate the origin of the coronavirus that sparked the pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said, a day after China rejected the proposed scope of a second phase.
Key points:
- The head of WHO said it was premature to rule out the possibility a laboratory leak was behind the spread of the virus
- China has call the theory “absurd”
- A WHO-led team investigating COVID’s origin has already spent weeks in and around the city of Wuhan
China’s vice-minister of the National Health Commission, Zeng Yixin, said on Thursday he was “rather taken aback” that the plan included further investigation of the theory that the virus might have leaked from a Chinese lab.
China accuses critics of seeking to blame it for the pandemic and politicising an issue that should be left to scientists.
When asked about China’s rejection, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told a United Nations briefing in Geneva: “This is not about politics, it’s not about a blame game.”
“It is about basically a requirement we all have to try to understand how the pathogen came into the human population,” he said.
“In this sense, countries really have the responsibility to work together and to work with WHO in a spirit of partnership.”
Last week, the head of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said it was premature to rule out a potential link between the COVID-19 pandemic and a laboratory leak.
“We ask China to be transparent and open and to cooperate,” he told a news conference.
“We owe it to the millions who suffered and the millions who died to know what happened.”
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says countries have a “responsibility” to work together.(Reuters: Laurent Gillieron, file photo
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COVID origin investigations
There’s been many a theory about where COVID-19 came from and one particular one about the virus escaping a laboratory in Wuhan doesn’t seem to have fallen off the radar. Here’s what we know about why that is.
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A WHO-led team spent four weeks in and around the central city of Wuhan with Chinese researchers in March.
In a joint report, it said the virus was likely to have been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal.
It also said the “introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway”, but countries including the United States and some scientists were not satisfied.
China has called the theory that the virus may have escaped from a Wuhan laboratory “absurd”.
What you need to know about coronavirus:
Reuters/AP