International group of scientists questioned WHO and called for further research on the origin of the coronavirus in China

As anticipation grows for the report’s imminent publication by experts sent to Wuhan to investigate the origins of the pandemic, 26 international researchers published an open letter calling for a new independent and more in-depth investigation, in which they denounced the “structural limitations” imposed on WHO specialists during their visit to China.

“Because we believe that the joint team process [de la OMS] and efforts to date they do not constitute a comprehensive, credible and transparent investigation, we call on the international community to put in place a structure and a process that», Wrote the group in a letter published in prestigious media The Wall Street Journal in the United States and The world in France.

In January WHO has sent a team of specialists to Wuhan, in central China, where the first case of coronavirus was detected at the end of December 2019. There is they stayed four weeks, in order to find out the origin of the virus. The expected final report and a summary will be published, at the same time, “The week of March 15”, said the head of the mission, Peter Ben Embarek.

In the open letter, however, the scientists pointed out that due to the Chinese regime’s interference, the The WHO team in China did not have the mandate or access to fully assess all hypotheses about the origin of the disease which has caused more than two and a half million deaths worldwide. Therefore, they said, the letter seeks to push for full access to data and an assessment of all hypotheses, including the possibility that the outbreak originated from a Chinese laboratory.

“We should let the data guide us at the end of the day, and there is a dearth of data right now.”, explained in the middle Morning Message from South China Nikolai Petrovsky, a vaccinologist at the School of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University in Australia and one of the signatories of the letter. “What we need to do is keep these questions open and collect data until, hopefully, we reach a point where the data indicates that one option is much more likely than others. “

The genetic engineer Alina chan, another signatory to the open letter and researcher at the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard, said it was important for the WHO team to be clear in the report about their limitations when assessing hypotheses. “If you don’t have the warrant and can’t access it, say so immediately”, He said.

Petrovsky said that he and other members of the group, which has been meeting informally online since January, They felt that the international scientific community had prejudices about the possibility that the virus manifested itself during a laboratory accident.

Prominent voices in the scientific community have rejected this theory, with others that the virus has been genetically manipulated in a laboratory. The consensus of the scientific community is that the virus was born naturally in an animal and then made the jump to humans due to the greater contact between animals and humans.

The WHO team said it was “Extremely unlikely” that the virus spread following a laboratory incident in Wuhan, a hypothesis that revolves around the Wuhan Institute of Virology, one of the world’s leading centers for the study of bat coronaviruses.

However, Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO team leader told the magazine Science that the mission was not equipped for a full audit of the laboratory in order to further assess the hypothesis of a virus leak from a laboratory.

China responded to the open letter by calling it political persecution “with presumption of guilt”. The regime, accused of covering the epidemic in the initial stages and closely monitoring the WHO mission, defended its transparency and the work of the WHO mission, in which international and Chinese researchers worked. together. “The experts from both sides had a full and sincere exchange, and the conclusion reflected the consensus of both sides, which is objective, scientific and authoritative.”said the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wang Wenbin.

Faced with the suspicions they foresee of the mission, andThe director-general of the WHO promised that the report of the experts sent to China would be done in “full transparency”.

“What I can guarantee you is that everything that happened during the mission will be presented in a transparent manner.»Promised the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, during a press conference this Friday in Geneva.

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