Exclusive | Coronavirus: China scientist calls for ‘continuity’ in next phase of WHO origins hunt

Expert who led Chinese team during investigation in Wuhan says the same people should be involved in new study
Liang Wannian also says host country should have a say in who takes part to ‘fully respect’ their national sovereignty

Coronavirus pandemic

Zhuang Pinghuiin Beijing

Published: 12:00pm, 5 Aug 2021

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A top scientist who led China’s team during the WHO investigation into the origins of Covid-19 in Wuhan said the same experts should be involved in the next phase of the study and the host country should have a say in who takes part.

Liang Wannian was China’s key expert in the joint inquiry with the World Health Organization earlier this year and said it “will ensure professionalism and continuity” if the new team of international scientists is based on the one from the first investigation.

“I think the WHO should be fully aware of this from a scientific point of view,” said Liang, a professor with the Vanke School of Public Health at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Expert leading China’s WHO team urges inquiry to look at other countries

He said the host country of the next phase of the investigation should also be involved in deciding who joins the mission.

“In order to fully respect the national sovereignty of the next country conducting the new coronavirus tracing study, the final composition of the expert group should be mutually agreed between the host country and the WHO, with the leader of the expert group being a technical expert or official of the WHO Secretariat and an expert recommended by the host country,” Liang said in a written response to the South China Morning Post.

01:15

China rejects WHO plan to revisit Covid-19 lab leak theory

The remarks come after China rejected a WHO proposal last month for further research into how the pandemic started. The plan includes “audits of relevant laboratories and research institutions operating in the area of the initial human cases identified in December 2019” – a reference to a theory that the virus could have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, the city in China where it was first detected. The WHO proposal also calls for “studies of animal markets in and around Wuhan, including continuing studies on animals sold at the Huanan wholesale market”.

After the team of experts travelled to the city in January, spending four weeks there, they concluded that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely” to have caused the first cases, and Beijing says there should be no further investigation into this unless there is new evidence. It also wants the focus of the inquiry to shift to other countries.

There have been growing calls for further investigation. In May, US President Joe Biden called on US intelligence agencies to redouble their efforts to investigate the origins of the coronavirus – including whether it came from a lab accident – and report back to him in 90 days.

05:08

Nature or lab leak? Why tracing the origin of Covid-19 matters

It is unclear how Liang’s suggestion would fit within the UN health agency’s plan for the next phase, which includes a new framework and experts to guide the second stage of origins tracing.

WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a briefing to member states last month that the world needed a “more stable and predictable framework” for studying the origins of new pathogens with epidemic or pandemic potential.

He also said a new International Scientific Advisory Group for Origins of Novel Pathogens would be established that would “play a vital role in the next phase of studies into the origins of Sars-CoV-2, as well as the origins of future new pathogens”. Members of the advisory group would be selected based on their technical expertise, and geographical representation and gender balance would be taken into account, with an open call for nominations to be launched “soon”, the WHO chief said.

Liang did not say whether China would nominate anyone under the new framework, but he said the selection of a WHO expert group required the consent of member states and needed to follow the procedures of its decision-making body, the WHO Assembly.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says the world needs a “more stable and predictable framework” for studying the origins of new pathogens with pandemic potential. Photo: AP

Members of the international team that went to China were selected by the WHO and finalised in consultation with Beijing. The joint team comprised 17 Chinese scientists, 10 international experts from 10 countries, and seven other experts and support staff from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and the WHO.

The inclusion of a scientist who had collaborated on studies with the Wuhan Institute of Virology – at the centre of the lab leak theory – has been criticised for potential conflict of interest. The team member, Peter Daszak – a British zoologist and president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit group in New York – has said that neither he nor the EcoHealth Alliance received any funding from the Chinese government and that he joined the WHO team in China in a private capacity.

China vs the WHO: where to look next in the hunt for Covid-19’s origins

Liang said the “effective working mechanisms and methods” used during the WHO mission to China could be used in other countries in the next phase of the investigation, and it should be done in a way that ensured “maximum scientific accuracy, validity, legitimacy and fairness”.

He said the Chinese and international scientists had “established a good cooperation mechanism”. “Since the WHO experts left China, communication between Chinese experts and international WHO experts on scientific issues hasn’t stopped and we do not feel the need to stop such cooperation,” Liang said.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Call for ‘continuity’ in WHO origin hunt