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“We want to know the origin and we will do everything possible to find out,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
He called on critics who accuse the WHO of handing over leadership of the investigation to China to stop politicizing the issue.
“The position of the WHO is very, very clear. We need to know the origin of this virus, because it can help prevent future outbreaks,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The United States, which has claimed more than 262,000 lives and is the worst affected country in the world, has harshly criticized the WHO’s handling of the crisis, accusing it of appeasing China and delaying the investigation into how the outbreak began.
Other critics also expressed concern that the agency may allow China to dictate the terms of an international investigation into the origin of the virus.
Since the new coronavirus first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late China last year, COVID-19 infection has been confirmed in nearly 63 million people. people, of which 1.46 million died.
WHO has been preparing for several months to send a team of international experts to China, including epidemiologists and animal health specialists, to help investigate the animal origin of the novel coronavirus pandemic and how the virus has spread to humans. for the first time.
The organization sent a preparatory team to Beijing in July to help lay the groundwork for an international investigation.
However, it is not clear when a larger team of scientists will be able to travel to China to begin epidemiological studies to identify the first cases of human infection and the source of their infection.
WHO’s head of emergencies Michael Ryan said last week that the agency hopes to send an international team to Wuhan “as soon as possible.”
At the time, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday dismissed criticism of the lack of transparency in the investigation, noting that the names and credentials of the team’s experts had been made public.
“It just came to our knowledge then. We want to know the origin. I don’t want confusion about that,” he said.
Researchers initially thought the virus had spread from animals to humans at the Wuhan market, which sells exotic animals for meat.
However, experts now believe that the outbreak may not have occurred in the market, but only intensified there.
The new coronavirus is widely believed to have originated in bats, but the species through which it could have been transmitted to humans remains unclear.
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