United States backs WHO’s proposal to conduct a new investigation into the origin of the coronavirus in China

The United States on Wednesday reiterated its support for the World Health Organization (WHO) to conduct a new investigation to determine the origin of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The United States is supporting the WHO’s plan to conduct additional studies on the origins of COVID-19, including in the PRC (People’s Republic of China), to better understand this pandemic and prevent future ones. “, noted in their social networks the US Secretary of State, Antoine Blink, who had a meeting with Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the international organization.

“We are talking about saving lives by ending this pandemic and advance global health security, ”he said of the meeting.

The North American foreign minister reiterated the need for a new investigation, a week after the Chinese regime refused to collaborate with the WHO. The Deputy Minister of the National Health Commission, Zeng Yixin, said he was surprised by the proposal for a new assessment to rule out the theory that SARS-Cov-2 had come out of a laboratory.

It is a posture that Joe Biden’s government called him “irresponsible” and “dangerous”. “We are deeply disappointed. Their position is irresponsible and, frankly, dangerous, ”said the White House spokeswoman, Jen psaki, last Thursday.

According to the proposal presented in Beijing, the second phase of WHO’s investigations would include analyze the markets and laboratories of Wuhan, the city where the first outbreaks of the virus were detected.

Zeng Yixin called the WHO proposal “arrogant“O”lack of common sense“And asked the organization to shed its work”political interference”.

In this regard, Psaki pointed out that It is “crucial” that China gives access to “data and samples” on its territory so that the world can “understand” what happened and “prevent the next pandemic”. “This is about saving lives in the future, and now is not the time to hinder WHO investigations,” President Biden said.

Last week the WHO Director-General called on the Chinese regime “to be transparent and open” and to “cooperate in particular by providing raw data on the first days of the pandemic ”.

Ghebreyesus assured that knowing the origin of the coronavirus “is an unpaid debt with millions of people who have suffered from it”.

In February, the WHO Wuhan mission requested access to raw data from patients registered in city hospitals with symptoms similar to covid before the first known case of the diseaseBut China said these had already been studied by its experts.

Experts said in a joint report released in March that the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans via another animal.

Corn countries like the United States and some scientists have called for more research, especially about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was conducting research on bats.

The spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, Zhao Lijian, said some data could not be copied or left from China because it involved personal information.

The origin of the pandemic it has not been clarified and determining it is a task that can take years. The scientific community points to a zoonotic epidemic, but does not rule out the possibility that it occurred in the laboratory.

Tedros admitted that “there was a lot of pressure“To rule out the hypothesis that the pandemic occurred in a laboratory accident (a theory which has been particularly highlighted by the media and US authorities), but argued that”more complete information is needed to exclude it”.

The CEO also admitted that “Laboratory accidents can happen” and he assured that he himself, working in such facilities in the past as an expert in immunology, had made a mistake. “It is important to review what happened in the laboratories, and we need direct information on the situation of these installations before the pandemic and at the beginning of it ”, he concluded.

The American President, Joe Biden in May ordered intelligence agencies to investigate the origin of the pandemic, including the theory of laboratory leaks. The leak hypothesis had already been raised during the global epidemic, including by Biden’s predecessor, Donald trump, but it was widely rejected and considered a conspiracy theory.

However, it has recently gained in popularity, fueled by reports that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in 2019 after visiting a bat cave in southwest China’s Yunnan Province.

China, who fiercely tries to rule out the laboratory hypothesis, accused Washington of disseminating “conspiracy theories” and denied information about the hospitalization of investigators in Wuhan published by the American media.

(With information from EFE and AFP)

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