The World Health Organization (WHO) Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has called on China to provide more data regarding the unclear origins of COVID-19, saying he is prepared to dispatch a new team of experts to investigate in the matter, according to a recent article published on the Financial Times (FT) news website.
Tedros noted that the WHO is diligently seeking collaboration from China. “We’re pressing China to give full access, and we are asking countries to raise it during their bilateral meetings.”
He added “We have already asked in writing to give us information…and also [are] willing to send a team if they allow us to do so.”
Tedros revealed to the Financial Times that he conducted a visit to Beijing in January 2020 to persuade Chinese President Xi Jinping to allow the first Covid-19 mission of WHO experts, led by Bruce Aylward, to enter the country.
“I went and met the president,” Tedros said. “The officials below him were not willing to allow us to send a team. So, I had to travel to convince him why it’s so important.”
The previous joint examination, which took place in early 2021 in China, favored the theory of animal-to-human transmission, but with concerns still unaddressed and no further access provided. Tedros pointed out that all possibilities remain on the table. “Unless we get evidence beyond reasonable doubt, we cannot just say this or that,” he clarified. “We will get the answer. It’s a matter of time.”
After the visit in 2021, the WHO issued an inconclusive and heavily criticized report due to Beijing’s lack of cooperation. The official said that the study began in private, but when Beijing ignored, it was made public.
The call for information comes amid ongoing uncertainty about the origins of the pandemic, which was first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, while health authorities continue to race to develop vaccines to combat newer emerging coronavirus variants.
The COVID-19 pandemic was politicized from the start, said Tedros, in thinly-veiled critique of former US President Donald Trump, who temporarily pulled US funding and threated to withdraw the UW from the WHO in 2020.
Tedros concluded that the pandemic has made many governments see the importance of strengthening their health-care systems’ resilience, as “…people are starting to realise that it is [health care] is actually an investment that can prevent pandemics from happening.”