Jakarta –
The Chinese government has been urged to be more cooperative during investigations into the origins of the coronavirus outbreak. WHO Director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called on Beijing to be more transparent and open access to data.
At a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, Tedros admitted that his party did not rule out the possibility of a laboratory leak that triggered the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan in January 2019. According to him, the denial regarding the accusation was “premature.”
Tedros’ statement shifts from the WHO’s policy direction which has tended to avoid confrontation with Beijing. He called on China to be more cooperative in the investigation.
“We hope there will be better cooperation to uncover what happened,” he said.
In recent months, the WHO has faced double pressure to seek a deeper investigation into the origins of the coronavirus outbreak. In January an international team of experts visited Wuhan to collect data.
But according to Tedros, the biggest challenge in the first phase of the investigation was “access to the raw data. The raw data is not shared,” he said.
“Now we have designed the second phase of the study and we ask China to be more transparent, open and cooperative, especially regarding raw data as we asked for in the early days of the pandemic.”
Data access limitations
The first report from the WHO and China’s investigations in March only listed various hypotheses regarding the origin of the corona in order of probability. As for the theory of laboratory leaks, it is considered “highly impossible.”
The WHO investigation was criticized for not being transparent, and for not taking the laboratory leak theory more seriously. In the report, WHO used only 440 words to write a rebuttal.
“There is a premature push” to dispel the theory, Tedros said.
Long regarded as a conspiracy theory and rejected by Beijing, the idea that the coronavirus emerged from a leak in a laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is now on the world’s political agenda, which the United States is pushing for.
Tedros, an immunologist, said he had worked as a laboratory technician, “and accidents are common.”
“It’s normal. I’ve experienced it myself,” he said. “We need information, direct information about the situation in this laboratory before and during the pandemic.”
He lamented how international teams were not allowed access to raw data to help with research. According to him, transparency is important, especially considering the large number of casualties.
“I think we owe it to them to uncover what happened,” he said. “We have to know what happened to prevent another pandemic.”
rzn/hp ( (afp/rtr)
Watch the video ‘WHO says there is a possibility of the emergence of a new variant of corona that is more dangerous’:
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