WHO chief says agency will ‘continue to push’ to uncover Covid’s origins

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says it is ‘scientifically correct and morally correct’ to pursue investigation into how pandemic started
The remarks come amid reports that the UN health body has abandoned probe because of challenges in conducting studies in China

Coronavirus China

Zhuang Pinghuiin Beijing

Published: 3:01pm, 16 Feb 2023

Why you can trust SCMP

The World Health Organization (WHO) will continue to push for studies on how the Covid-19 pandemic started, the agency’s chief said, denying an earlier media report that the mission had been abandoned because of difficulty in conducting crucial studies in China.

“I assure you that we will continue to push. We will continue to pursue until we get the answer because this is scientifically correct and morally correct to really pursue and understand the answer to the origins and how this pandemic has started,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general, at a media briefing on Wednesday.

The remarks came on the same day the journal Nature reported the agency had shelved the second phase of its scientific investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, citing challenges over attempts to conduct studies in China.

Will revised Chinese law help prevent diseases jumping from animals to people?

China’s foreign ministry pushed back against the Nature report, saying the country has “always supported and participated in global scientific origin tracing”.

“China has always maintained an open, transparent and responsible attitude on the issue of origin tracing. China will continue to support global scientific tracing for Covid-19 origins and maintain communication and cooperation with the WHO,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Thursday.

In a briefing on Wednesday, Wang said the country had received WHO experts to cooperate on tracing the origins of the virus and shared research findings with the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins on Novel Pathogens (Sago), an expert committee to study the origin of Covid-19 and emerging diseases.

“China has shared more data and research findings on Sars-CoV-2 origins study than any other country. This fully demonstrates China’s open, transparent and responsible attitude and its support for the work of the WHO and Sago,” Wang said.

US Republicans vow to start new probe into Covid origin if they win House

Tedros said the agency sent a letter to a “top official in China” to ask for cooperation seven weeks ago.

“We need cooperation and transparency and the information we asked in order to know how this started,” Tedros said, adding it was important to know how the Covid-19 pandemic started to prevent the next one.

In February 2020, the agency sent a team of experts to Wuhan, Hubei province, where Covid-19 was first detected in December 2019, to understand the virus, the outbreak and China’s response. Another team was allowed back to Wuhan to conduct the investigation in January 2021 amid highly politicised tensions over the origin of the virus.

The report from that 2021 mission was published in March and concluded it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus that causes Covid-19 originated in a laboratory. It also suggested further investigation was needed into whether the virus was carried in frozen food.

The WHO-China report concluded that zoonotic spread was the likeliest scenario for the origin of the virus, but did not find evidence for how it spread to humans.

02:17

WHO says China under-representing real impact of its latest Covid-19 surge

Tedros later suggested the controversial report did not contain an “extensive enough” assessment of the lab leak theory.

In a report last June, the 25-member Sago said the strongest evidence still suggested zoonotic transmission, but the theory that the virus could have escaped from a laboratory needed “further investigations”. Brazilian, Russian and Chinese scientists serving as Sago members objected to that call.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead for Covid-19, was quoted by Nature as saying “there is no phase two”. However, she clarified during the Wednesday briefing that the “WHO has not abandoned studying the origins of Covid-19. We have not. And we will not”.

“Initially, phase two was a plan to be a continuation of that January 2021 mission to Wuhan, which was in a sense seen as phase one. But we updated our plans … in a sense phase two became Sago.”

Covid-19 data points to animal origin of virus: WHO advisers

Van Kerkhove said the agency continued to ask for more cooperation and collaboration from Beijing to “advance studies that need to take place in China”.

“Studies of the animal-human interface, on markets, on farms – these studies need to be conducted in China and we need cooperation with our colleagues there to advance our understanding,” she said.

Foreign ministry spokesman Wang said the WHO and Sago should take a close look at “clues from the international science community” pointing to Covid-19 sources around the world and US military laboratories.