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GENEVA: The World Health Organization said Monday that Washington had provided no evidence to support the “speculative” claims by the President of the United States that the new coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory.
“We have not received any specific data or evidence from the United States government regarding the alleged origin of the virus, so from our perspective this remains speculative,” said WHO Director of Emergencies Michael Ryan in a virtual conference.
Scientists believe the killer virus leaped from animals to humans, emerging in China late last year, possibly from a market in Wuhan that sells exotic animals for meat.
But the President of the United States, Donald Trump, increasingly critical of China’s management of the first outbreak, claims to have evidence that it started in a laboratory in Wuhan.
And United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that “enormous evidence” supported that claim, which China has vehemently denied.
“Like any evidence-based organization, we would be very willing to receive any information related to the origin of the virus,” Ryan said, stressing that it is “a very important piece of public health information for future control.”
“If that data and evidence is available, then it will be up to the United States government to decide if and when it can be shared, but it is difficult for WHO to operate in an information gap on this,” he added.
Science at the center
The UN health agency, which has also faced scathing criticism from Trump over accusations that it initially downplayed the severity of the outbreak to protect China, has repeatedly said the virus appears to have originated naturally from a source. animal.
WHO expert Maria Van Kerkhove noted during Monday’s briefing that there were some 15,000 complete genome sequences of the new coronavirus available, and “out of all the evidence we’ve seen … this virus is naturally occurring.”
While coronaviruses generally originate from bats, both Van Kerkhove and Ryan emphasized the importance of discovering how the virus that causes Covid-19 moved to humans and which animal served as an “intermediate host” along the way.
“We need to understand more about that natural origin, and particularly about the intermediate hosts,” Ryan said.
It was important to know “so that we can implement the correct public-animal and human-health interface policies that prevent this from happening again,” he emphasized.
The WHO said last week that it wanted to be invited to participate in Chinese research into the animal origins of the pandemic, which in a matter of months has killed nearly 250,000 people worldwide.
“We have offered, as we do with all cases in all countries, assistance in conducting those investigations,” Ryan said Monday.
“We can learn from Chinese scientists,” he said.
But he cautioned that if questions about the origin of the virus “are projected as an aggressive investigation of wrongdoing, I think it’s much more difficult to deal with.” That is a political question.
“Science needs to be at the center,” he said.
“If we have science-based research and science-based research on what are the source species and the intermediate species, that will benefit everyone on the planet.” – AFP
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