WHO blasts China for withholding info on COVID origin after data pulled offline
gave World Health Organization (WHO) targeted Chinese officials with withholding information that could shed light on the origin of COVID-19.
“These data could have been shared three years ago — and should have been,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday, according to a New York Times report.
Ghebreyesus’ comments come later. Chinese data First available in January, it was suddenly pulled offline after the researchers offered to collaborate with Chinese scientists to analyze the data.
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Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. (Hector Ratamel/AFP/File)
Before the data suddenly disappeared, a team of international virus experts was able to download and analyze it. According to the researchers, the new information points to the idea that the pandemic may have originated in a seafood market in Wuhan, where illegally traded raccoons infected humans with the virus. .
The researchers He said the data showed that raccoons, which are known to spread the coronavirus, left behind DNA in the same area of the Wuhan market where the pandemic coronavirus originated. A genetic signature was also discovered.
“There’s a good chance that the animals that collected the DNA also collected the virus,” University of Utah virologist Stephen Goldstein told The Associated Press. “If you’re going to do environmental sampling as a result of a zoonotic spillover event … this is basically what you would expect.”
Members of a World Health Organization team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus disease arrived at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. (Reuters/Thomas Peter/File)
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But the finding would contradict explanations from Chinese officials, who have insisted that the samples tested positive Corona Virus Not animals were brought to the market but sick people.
“It’s highly unlikely that animal DNA, especially raccoon dog DNA, mixed with the viral samples,” Sarah Cobb, an epidemiologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, told the New Yorker. Gone, if it’s mostly human pollution.” Times
Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. (Hector Ratamel/AFP via Getty Images)
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Access to the data may finally help shed light on the origins of the pandemic, a mystery that has led to several plausible explanations but no definitive answer. Grebesis called on China to be transparent with the information, saying the missing evidence “needs to be shared with the international community immediately.”