report in Dawn, Sept 18th, 2023
GENEVA: The World Health Organisation chief has urged Beijing to offer more information on the origins of Covid-19 and is ready to send a second team to probe the matter, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

“We’re pressing China to give full access, and we are asking countries to raise it during their bilateral meetings to urge Beijing to co-operate,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebr­eyesus told the newspaper.

The WHO chief’s comments come as health authorities and pharmaceutical companies across the world have been racing to update vaccines to combat newer emerging coronavirus variants.

He said the WHO had already written to China asking “to give us information” and for the organisation to send a team “if they allow us to do so”. He has for long been pressing China to share its information about the origins of Covid-19, saying that until that happened all hypotheses remained on the table.

The virus was first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, with many suspecting it spread in a live animal market before fanning out around the world and killing nearly seven million people. However, the international community has been unable to determine with certainty of its origin.

A team of specialists led by the WHO and accompanied by Chinese colleagues had investigated China in early 2021.

In a joint report, they favoured the hypothesis that the virus had been transmitted by intermediary animal from a bat to a human, possibly at a market.

Ghebreyesus said after that all options remained “on the table”.

The WHO lifted the highest alert level that had been in place for the pandemic earlier this year. Thanks to vaccines, post-infection immunity and better treatment, the virus is now under greater control, although with the arrival of autumn in the Northern Hemi­sphere, new variants are emerging.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1776504/who-chief-asks-china-for-full-access-to-probe-covid-origins