‘It’s impossible’: WHO scientist acknowledged pressure from China not to investigate COVID-19 leak from Wuhan laboratory

In early 2021, almost a year after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, a joint mission from World Health Organization with China, he made a report in which they said it was “extremely unlikely” that the origin of the disease was an accidental laboratory event at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. However, an expert from the international organization has now given details of the work he has done and raised doubts.

The WHO team leader, Pierre Embarek, told a press conference on February 9 that despite the fact that laboratory had conducted experiments with the bat coronavirus, it was “very unlikely that anything could escape from such a place”.

Faced with this conclusion, China assured that this report was the one that had the final say and did not want to be fully investigated any possible leak on the site. In fact, they pointed out that the origin of the disease could even have taken place outside this country.

However, six months after the report was published, Embarek gave details of how China lobbied WHO researchers. In an interview with the Danish network TV2 said that country’s representatives opposed – until the last days of the mission – any mention of a possible laboratory leak, alleging that “It was impossible, and so there was no need to waste time with it”.

In view of this position, the expert insisted that something should be included in the report on the matter, but that they they replied that it was “extremely unlikely”.

Although Embarek clarified that in his opinion that a leak occurred in the lab is “unlikely”, he raised the hypothesis that a local employee could have been “patient zero”, by being infected with a wild bat while collecting samples.

In this sense, he explained, “In this case, the virus passed directly from a bat to a human, so it would be a lab worker rather than a random villager or another person who has regular contact with bats. Then is in the category of probable”.

In this way, he referred to one of the versions on the origin of COVID-19 which argued that a Chinese worker from somewhere far from the city could have been the so-called ‘patient zero’.

The specialist suggested that a full investigation be conducted into the transfer of the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention on December 2, 2019 to a location near a market where traces of the virus were later detected.

“You also have to move the virus collection, sampling and other collections from one place to another,” he said. On this point, both the WHO report and China agreed that there was no interruption in the transfer.

When asked why he believed China was resisting the theory of a possible laboratory leak as the origin of the pandemic, he replied, “Probably because it means there is human error.” behind such an incident, and they are not very happy. Admit it “.

Finally, he argued: “Partly there is the traditional Asian feeling that you shouldn’t look bad, and also the whole system is very focused on the fact that this one is foolproof and everything has to. be perfect. It could also be that someone wants to hide something. Who knows?”.