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WASHINGTON, March 5: The World Health Organization has scrapped plans by a team that visited Wuhan, China, to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic and issue an interim report, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday night.
Wuhan is the city where the pandemic is believed to have originated in late 2019.
The WHO team recently returned from their visit there and said they had no clear finding on the genesis of the virus, amid tensions between the United States and China over what caused the once-occurring global health crisis. a century.
The United States responded by saying it had “deep concerns” about what the team had learned and pressured China for more information.
WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had said on February 12 that a preliminary report would be released shortly thereafter with a summary of the team’s findings, and a full report in a matter of weeks.
But now the plan is to scrap the interim report, the Journal said, citing Peter Ben Embarek, the scientist who led the team.
Instead, the team will publish the full and final report, with a summary of its findings, the newspaper said, citing a WHO spokesperson.
This broader report “will be published in the coming weeks and will include key findings,” he quoted this spokesperson.
“By definition, a summary report does not have all the details,” said Ben Embarek.
“So since (there is) so much interest in this report, a summary alone would not satisfy readers’ curiosity,” he added.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price asked China on Thursday to share what it knows from the early days of the pandemic.
“It’s about learning and doing, being in a position to do everything we can to protect ourselves, the American people, and the international community against the threats of a pandemic in the future,” Price said in a briefing.
“That is why we need this understanding. That is why we need this transparency from the Chinese government, ”he said. AFP
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