Diseases: WHO urges Beijing: More studies on coronavirus origins
Diseases
WHO urges Beijing: More studies on coronavirus origins
A security employee tries in February 2021 in front of the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, journalists on the photo
© Ng Han Guan/AP/dpa
The WHO is still looking for the origin of Corona and hopes for cooperation from China – so far without success. The organization believes further studies are necessary.
The World Health Organization (WHO) China is still pushing for greater cooperation in the search for the origin of the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus. Seven weeks ago, he sent another letter to a “high-ranking official” in Beijing asking for cooperation, said WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Geneva.
The specially established council of independent experts on strategies when searching for the origins of new pathogens (Sago) have clear recommendations for the in China necessary studies, said WHO emergency response coordinator Mike Ryan. The member countries are responsible for conducting such studies, and the WHO is awaiting the results. Tedros has repeatedly offered support to China and demanded that these studies be carried out. “And as long as we don’t have these studies, all hypotheses about the origin of the virus remain on the table,” Ryan said. He was referring to the hypothesis, which China has always rejected, that the virus could have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
The journal “Nature” had written in a well-regarded article that after an initial study trip to China in early 2021, the WHO had launched the next phase of the scientific investigation into the origin of the virus Coronavirus given up. The background is the resistance of China. The WHO vehemently rejected this account.
