WHO Says China Has More on Covid Origin

The World Health Organization said Thursday that it was sure China had far more data that could shed light on the origins of COVID-19, demanding that Beijing immediately share all relevant information.

"Without full access to the information that China has ... all hypotheses are on the table," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva.

"That's why we have been asking China to be cooperative on this," he said, insisting that if Beijing does provide the missing data, "we will know what happened or how it started."

More than three years after COVID-19 surfaced, heated debate still rages around the origins of the pandemic.

The issue has proved divisive for the scientific community and even different U.S. government agencies, which are split between one theory that the virus jumped naturally from animals to humans and another that the virus likely leaked from a Wuhan laboratory — a claim China has angrily denied.

Late last month, new evidence emerged that raccoon dogs, known to be able to carry and transmit viruses similar to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, were at a market in Wuhan when the disease was first detected in humans.

The researchers who unexpectedly stumbled over the genetic data say that those data support but cannot prove the theory that the virus originated in animals, possibly first jumping over to humans at the market.

'Clues,' not clarity

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's technical lead on COVID-19, told journalists Thursday that the new information provided "clues" but no clear answers, insisting that the data "collected in January and February 2020, more than three years ago," should have been shared long ago.

"Without information, without data to make a proper assessment, it's very difficult for us to give a concrete answer," she said. "And in the present time, we don't have a concrete answer of how the pandemic began."

"We need to know the answer, beyond reasonable doubt." [VOA/JS]