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ZURICH: The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday (January 6) that he was “very disappointed” that China has not yet authorized the entry of a team of international experts to examine the origins of the coronavirus.
The 10-person team was due to depart in early January as part of a long-awaited mission to investigate the first cases of COVID-19, first reported more than a year ago in Wuhan, China.
“Today we learned that Chinese officials have not yet finalized the necessary permits for the team’s arrival in China,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told an online press conference in Geneva.
“I have been in contact with senior Chinese officials and once again I have made it clear that the mission is a priority for the WHO,” he said of the trip that he said took place with Beijing.
READ: WHO experts will delve into tricky territory in search of the origins of COVID-19
The mission was to be led by Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO’s leading expert on animal diseases that cross the species barrier, who went to China on a preliminary mission last July.
Two members of the international team had already started their trip to China. One has returned and the other is in transit to a third country, emergency chief Mike Ryan said.
However, he added: “We trust and hope that it is just a logistical and bureaucratic issue that can be resolved very quickly.”
READ: ‘We are not afraid’: Wuhan residents say they hope WHO team will find origins of COVID-19
Before the trip, Beijing has been seeking to shape the narrative about when and where the pandemic started, and senior diplomat Wang Yi said “more and more studies” showed it emerged in multiple regions. Ryan has previously called this “highly speculative.”
China has dismissed criticism for its handling of the first cases that emerged in late 2019, although some, including US President Donald Trump, have questioned Beijing’s actions during the outbreak.
Washington, which has announced plans to leave the WHO, has called for a “transparent” investigation and criticized the terms under which Chinese experts carried out the first phase of the investigation.
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