- The world may never find out the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci has said.
- The EU, meanwhile, will encourage members of the World Trade Organisation to phase out export restrictions for vaccines.
- Bloomberg rounds up virus updates from around the world.
US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said it was possible the world would never find out the precise origin of the coronavirus pandemic, after President Joe Biden last month ordered a new 90-day review from the intelligence community about the possible origins of the virus.
Fauci said during an appearance on MSNBC that while he feels it is still “more likely” that the virus jumped from animals to humans, “we still don’t know what the origin is.”
Fauci said that reports that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick in November 2019 gave more credence to the possibility that Covid-19 may have emerged from a “lab leak,” but said those reports still needed to be verified, while maintaining that animal to human transition happens “all the time.”
“You need to keep looking for the link and you need to keep looking for evidence that it’s something else like a lab leak,” Fauci said. “Those are open possibilities. We may not ever find out what that is.”
Meanwhile the European Union will encourage World Trade Organisation members to phase out export restrictions for vaccines, but will stop short of supporting an American-backed proposal to suspend intellectual property rights meant to boost the supply of Covid-19 shots.
New infections in India held near the lowest level since early April, as the country ordered 300 million vaccine doses from local manufacturer Biological-E. Japan led contributions totaling $2.4 billion aimed at closing a funding gap that has hampered the distribution of doses to poorer nations.
Further afield, China can’t begin to ease restrictions like the US even after inoculating a high level of its population because it has no way of analysing how well its vaccines have worked in its largely Covid-19-free population, according to a top health official.
Despite vaccinating more than 40% of its citizens with at least one dose, Feng Zijian, the deputy director general of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said China “has some unique difficulties” and is unable to match the US’s ability to examine vaccine effectiveness in real-time as cases and deaths ebb.
With assistance from Angus Whitley, Will Davies, Natalie Lung, Stephanie Phang, Kathleen Hunter, Justin Sink, Zoltan Simon and Danielle Bochove. This article has been edited for brevity.