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Peter Ben Embarek, who was a member of the WHO team that visited Wuhan, says a report on the mission’s findings was nearing completion. Photo: AP

Coronavirus: WHO report on mission to find Covid-19 origin ‘coming soon’

  • ‘We are at the point where we are cleaning up the document to make sure all the experts are OK with the content,’ says Danish scientist who was part of the team that visited China
  • But head of WHO’s health emergencies programme says document will be sent to member nations before being released to the public
The World Health Organization (WHO) says the report on its mission to Wuhan to trace the origin of the coronavirus will be ready in a few days.

The agency was now fact checking and translating the document, Peter Ben Embarek, a Danish scientist and WHO programme manager who was involved in the trip, said on Friday.

“We are at the point where we are cleaning up the document to make sure all the experts are OK with the content,” he said.

“I expect that in the next few days the whole process will be completed and we’ll be able to release it publicly.”

Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies programme, said the report would first be sent to member states for discussion before it was released to the public.

“We want to show our respect for our member states and share the report with them first as they are the ones who worked very closely with the director general to ensure this work was completed,” he said.

The 400-page report about the 28-day mission that ended on February 9 is expected to include minutes of the meetings between Chinese scientists and the WHO-led international team. The report was expected to be released on March 16, while an interim report was scrapped amid tensions between China and the US over the transparency issues.

A report by Chinese state-owned newspaper Global Times quoted an unnamed expert as saying last weekend that Beijing was concerned about how global political opinions could shape the report’s conclusions and that it might “deviate from the previous consensus”.

WHO Wuhan coronavirus mission over but much more work still to do

In an apparent move to make clear its position ahead of the report’s release, Beijing on Friday held a briefing for diplomats from more than 50 countries.

“Our purpose is to show our openness and transparency,” foreign ministry official Yang Tao said.

“China fought the epidemic in a transparent manner and has nothing to hide.”

Feng Zijian, deputy director of Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and member of the team that hosted the WHO mission, was quoted by Global Times as telling the diplomats that a consensus had already been reached between the two sides about the content of the report.

He reiterated that the mission had ruled out the possibility of the coronavirus having leaked from a laboratory and instead focused on how it might have jumped to humans either directly from bats or through an intermediate animal, or via frozen and chilled food products.
Beijing has repeatedly suggested the virus might have entered China on cold storage products but the theory has been widely disputed by scientists.

Feng also said that efforts to trace the origin of the coronavirus should not be restricted to a “specific location or specific time” but rather rolled out across the world.

Speaking to CNN on Friday, Robert Redfield, the former director of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said he believed the pathogen originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.

“I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely ideology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory. Escaped. Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out,” he said.

Most public health officials have, however, ruled out such a possibility, according to US infectious disease chief Anthony Fauci.

Additional reporting by Associated Press

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