COVID-19 origins - The African Mirror

Apr

2021

Call for new COVID-19 origins

A joint China-World Health Organization (WHO) study into COVID-19 has provided no credible answers about how the pandemic began, and more rigorous investigations are required - with or without Beijing's involvement, according to a group of international scientists and researchers. The joint study, released last week, said the likeliest transmission route for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, involved bats and other wildlife. It all but ruled out the possibility it had leaked from a laboratory. In an open letter, 24 scientists and researchers from Europe, the United States, Australia and Japan said the study was tainted by politics. "Their…

Apr

2021

By The African Mirror

Data withheld from WHO team

COVID-19

STEPHANIE NEBEHAY and JOHN MILLER DATA was withheld from World Health Organization investigators who travelled to China to research the origins of the coronavirus epidemic, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said. The United States, the European Union and other Western countries immediately called for China to give "full access" to independent experts to all data about the original outbreak in late 2019. In its final report, written jointly with Chinese scientists, a WHO-led team that spent four weeks in and around Wuhan in January and February said the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another…

Mar

2021

By The African Mirror

WHO says COVID-19 origins study not extensive enough, cites data access ‘difficulties’

COVID-19

A World Health Organization team probing the new coronavirus's origins cited problems accessing raw data, the health agency's chief said on Tuesday, calling for further studies because the assessment, so far, has not been extensive enough. "In my discussions with the team, they expressed the difficulties they encountered in accessing raw data," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after the report of a team that traveled to Wuhan, China, this year was released. "I expect future collaborative studies to include more timely and comprehensive data sharing." Although the team concluded a laboratory leak was the least likely hypothesis for the…