Data from the early days of the COVID pandemic were temporarily uploaded by Chinese scientists to an international database last month
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday pressed China to share its information on the origin of COVID-19, saying until that happens all cases remain on the table, more than three years have passed since it emerged the virus.
“Without full access to the information that China has, one cannot say one or the other,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in response to a question about the origin of the virus.
“All cases are on the table. This is the position of the WHO and that is why we ask China to be cooperative on this.”
“If they do that, we’ll know what happened or how it started,” he said.
The virus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, with many suspecting it spread in a live animal market before spreading around the world, killing nearly 7 million people.
Data from the early days of the COVID pandemic were tentatively uploaded by Chinese scientists to an international database last month.
They included genetic sequences found in over 1,000 environmental and animal samples taken in January 2020 at the Wuhan seafood market, the site of the first known outbreak of COVID.
The evidence showed that DNA from several animal species — including raccoon dogs — was found in environmental samples that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, suggesting they were “the most likely carriers” of it. disease, according to a group of international researchers. However, in a non-peer-reviewed study published by the scientific journal Nature this week, scientists from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention disputed the international team’s findings. They said the samples offered no evidence that the animals were actually infected. Also these were taken a month after the first human-to-human transmission in the market, so even if they tested positive for Covid, the animals may have contracted the virus from humans.
Maria Van Kerkov, head of the WHO’s technical team on COVID-19, said the recent Chinese information gives some “clues” about the origin but no answers. He said the WHO was working with scientists to find more evidence about the first cases of 2019, such as where those who became infected were.
Source :Skai
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