Did not abandon plans to trace origins of COVID-19: WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that it has not abandoned its efforts to establish the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and urged all nations to share what they know about it. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the new appeal was issued to deepen knowledge of how this pandemic began and to respond to future pandemics rather than apportion blame.

• Days ago, the United States (US) released a report alleging that COVID-19 was spread as a result of a lab leak in China in 2019, which Beijing vehemently rejected.
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray blamed the Chinese government-controlled lab for it.
• To recall, the first coronavirus case was discovered in 2019 in Wuhan, China, which houses a virus research laboratory.

Ghebreyesus said it is essential for every country to exchange information concerning the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic with the WHO and the international scientific community. Rather than assigning blame, he said the exercise will help the WHO understand viruses and respond to future epidemics and pandemics. "WHO has not abandoned any plans to identify the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic," he said.

The WHO chief reiterated his request for China to be transparent in data sharing and to perform the appropriate investigations. "Until then, all hypotheses on the origins of the virus remain on the table," he said. Nonetheless, he claimed that politics over the research of origin was making scientific study more difficult and the world less safe as a result.

Earlier this week, the US Department of Energy reportedly said that a Chinese lab leak was the most likely cause of the COVID-19 outbreak. The FBI also shared the same view, saying the source of the COVID-19 pandemic was "a potential lab incident in Wuhan", per Fox News. However, China vehemently denied the allegations, calling them a smear campaign against Beijing.

The WHO is however yet to have access to the US report. According to Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's COVID-19 Technical Lead, the organization reached out to the US mission in Geneva for more information but so far they did not have access to the data on which the US reports were based. "It remains vital that that information is shared," she added.

According to AFP, more than 6.8 million COVID-19 deaths have been reported to WHO, with over 758 million confirmed cases. Reportedly, the WHO acknowledged that the true toll is far higher. Meanwhile, Ghebreyesus said there was a "moral imperative" to find the pandemic's origin for the sake of the millions who lost their lives to it.