Coronavirus: WHO set to finalise Sago team for origins search after public comments

Name: Nature or lab leak? Why tracing the origin of Covid-19 matters
Uploaded: 2021-10-27T14:30:20.000Z
Duration: 5 min 8 s
Description: Nature or lab leak? Why tracing the origin of Covid-19 matters

List of 26 experts chosen for new permanent body has been subject to a two-week consultation period that ends on Wednesday

There has been criticism of some nominees for the group, which will guide research into the origins of this and future outbreaks

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Sago, a new permanent body, is a bid to move past the politics and controversy that has surrounded the search for the origins of the coronavirus. Photo: TNS

Simone McCarthy

Published: 10:30pm, 27 Oct 2021Updated: 10:05pm, 28 Oct 2021

A window for public comment on the experts chosen to direct World Health Organization inquiries into the origins of Covid-19 closes on Wednesday, with the UN body expected to move forward with a confirmed list in the coming days.

The 26 experts, announced by the WHO earlier this month, were nominated to join a new permanent body known as the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, or Sago, tasked with guiding research into the origins of this and future outbreaks and building a framework for how such investigations should be run.

“[They] were selected from over 700 applications and were chosen for their world-class expertise and experience in a range of disciplines as well as their geographic and gender diversity,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on October 13, when the names were announced.

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

The new group – which includes experts in virology, epidemiology, biosafety and animal health, coming from countries including China, the United States, India, Kenya and Brazil – is a bid to move past the politics and controversy that has surrounded the search for the pandemic origins.

WHO health emergencies director Michael Ryan said the UN body was hoping to “take a step back [and] create an environment where we can again look at the scientific issues”.

But before they get to work, the list of experts has been subject to a two-week consultation period that is standard for new WHO advisory groups. A process that usually garners little public attention, the Sago nominees have been in the spotlight amid heated controversy over the search for the origins of the virus – and who is driving it.

A WHO-led phase one mission to China earlier this year has been dogged by what critics call conflicts of interest or impartiality among team members and a failure to fully vet a theory that the virus could have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, the city where Covid-19 was first identified.