According to a source, only days after admitting that the Covid lab leak idea requires “more research,” the World Health Organization (WHO) director confidentially revealed to a top European lawmaker that the epidemic originated from China’s infamous Wuhan facility.
The most likely reason, according to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was a catastrophic accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, where diseases initially spread in late 2019, according to the Daily Mail.
However, the UN health agency insists officially that “all theories remain on the table.”
The WHO was first chastised for its submissive attitude toward China, but in the lack of solid proof of “zoonotic” spread – the process by which a virus jumps from animals to people – the global body is now taking a more neutral public posture, according to the article.
“We still don’t know where it came from or how it got into the human population.” Understanding the virus’s origins is critical for scientifically preventing future epidemics and pandemics,” Ghebreyesus was reported as saying last month.
“But we also owe it ethically to all those who have suffered and perished, as well as their families.” The longer it takes, the more difficult it becomes. We must act speedily.
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“All theories must be kept on the table until we have information that allows us to rule them in or out. This emphasises the need of keeping scientific activity independent from politics “he stated.
The origin of Covid has been a source of political and scientific contention, with scientists and politicians throughout the world claiming that the coronavirus leapt into people via bats or was released from a laboratory. The WHO first said that it was “very implausible” that Covid could have leaked into people from a lab, but the organisation eventually confessed to faults in the study and requested a new investigation.
According to a recent study by the WHO’s Scientific Advisory Group on the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), an expert body formed in 2021 to investigate the causes of the pandemic, “critical pieces of evidence are not yet accessible for a thorough understanding of how the Covid-19 epidemic originated.”
According to the findings, the virus was most likely transmitted by animals, most likely bats. However, it did not rule out the potential of a lab leak, citing a lack of specific data.
Meanwhile, WHO specialists, including the SAGO panel, have said that China is refusing to cooperate in the Covid origin investigation. Ghebreyesus also asked for “complete cooperation from all nations, particularly China, where the first SARS-CoV-2 cases were detected.”
China, for its part, has always claimed that rumours of a laboratory leak were a “conspiracy theory.” It has also been stated that the virus originated in the United States.
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