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A group of more than 20 signatories stated in an open letter published in The Wall Street Journal that the current mission was not independent enough and called for a new study to be conducted to explore all possible possibilities for the virus to originate.
Half of the joint group consisted of Chinese citizens whose scientific independence may be limited, the signatories said.
There have been outbursts of criticism because the mission has been late in delivering the interim report that was expected in the near future. Researchers may decide to publish a short summary on the same day as the detailed report, a WHO spokesperson said.
In February, the mission rejected allegations that the coronavirus could have spread from the laboratory, saying the infection is likely transmitted to humans through frozen wild animals or products. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus later said that the United Nations (UN) agency did not rule out any hypotheses.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the WHO has been criticized for unconditionally relying on claims by Chinese authorities about the infection.
Former United States President Donald Trump developed the theory that the virus could have escaped from the highest-security laboratory in Wuhan, China, where the new coronavirus was first identified.
The mission followed months of negotiations with China. Chinese state media and officials suspected of initially concealing the scale of the coronavirus outbreak are spreading the theory that the virus did not originate in China, but was introduced.
The researchers, who signed the open letter, did not rule out the laboratory scenario, among other options. None of the signatories is a member of the WHO-sponsored mission.
WHO rejects interim report of a study by a team of experts in Wuhan
The WHO has abandoned plans to publish an interim report by a team of experts who have visited Uhan to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday night.
The Chinese city of Wuhan is expected in 2019. The first outbreak of the coronavirus that triggered the global pandemic began in late 2006.
A team of experts who recently returned from a mission in Wuhan announced that the investigation had failed to identify the exact origins of the virus. The United States, for its part, responded that it was concerned by what the expert mission found and pressured China to provide more information.
WHO chief TA Ghebreyesus on February 12. It has said that a preliminary interim report, which will present the findings of the Uhane research team, should be published shortly after the end of the mission, and a detailed report in a few weeks.
However, it has now been decided to drop the interim report, The Wall Street Journal reported. The magazine quotes Peter Ben Embarek, who led the research team.
Rather than previous plans, the research team decided to publish a detailed final report with the findings of what Uhane investigated, he told the journal.
The full report “will be published in the coming weeks and will include key findings,” said PB Embarek.
“Because there is so much interest in this report, the interim summary would not satisfy readers’ curiosity,” he said.
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