THE WHO urged all countries today to share with him any information they have on the origin of Covid-19following statements made this week by the FBI and the US Department of Energy that the pandemic was caused by a leak from a laboratory.

In recent days, the issue of the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes Covid-19 has come back into the news.

“If a country has information about the origin of the pandemic, it is vital to share it with WHO and the international scientific community,” said the Secretary General of the Organization, Tedros Andanom Gebregesus during the regular press briefing. The point is not “to point to the culprits” but “to increase our knowledge of how this pandemic started so that we can prevent future outbreaks and pandemics, be prepared and respond appropriately”he insisted.

The head of the FBI Christopher Ray assessed this week that it was “very likely” that the pandemic was caused by some “leakage” from a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan. A similar guess was made two days earlier by the US Secretary of Energy.

When asked specifically about this issue, Maria Van Kerkov, who is in charge of the WHO’s response to the pandemic, explained that the Organization requested information from the top officials of the US delegation to the United Nations in Geneva. “We sent questions (…) to get information about the recent report of the Ministry of Energy, but also about other reports of various US agencies. At present, we do not have access to these reports, nor to the data that allowed them to be compiled,” he said.

The scientific community considers it critical to learn the origin of the virus in order to better combat a future pandemic.