WHO pins hopes on its new scientific advisory panel- Calls for China to cooperate, provide early data from Wuhan
The WHO said its newly formed advisory group on dangerous pathogens may be “our last chance” to determine the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, reports The Reuters.
About the investigation
A WHO-led team spent four weeks in and around Wuhan earlier this year with Chinese scientists, and said in a joint report in March that the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal but further research was needed.
Labs in the area where the first reports of human infections emerged in Wuhan must be a focus, as ruling out an accident requires sufficient evidence, it said.
Mike Ryan, WHO’s top emergency expert, said the new panel may be the last chance to establish the origin of SARS-CoV-2, “a virus that has stopped our whole world”.
“The WHO was seeking to take a step back, create an environment where we can again look at the scientific issues”, he said. “This is our best chance, and it may be our last chance to understand the origins of this virus.”
Chen Xu, China’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, told a separate news conference the conclusions of the joint study were “quite clear”, adding that as international teams had been sent to China twice already, “it is time to send teams to other places.”
Shortage of data
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said the investigation was hampered by a dearth of raw data pertaining to the first days of the outbreak and has called for lab audits.
Maria van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead on COVID-19, told in a news conference that “more than three dozen recommended studies” must still be carried out to determine how the virus crossed from the animal species to humans.
The WHO, in an editorial in Science, said that detailed investigations of the earliest known and suspected cases in China prior to December 2019 were still needed, including analyses of stored blood samples from 2019 in Wuhan and retrospective searches of hospital and mortality data for earlier cases.
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Source: The Reuters
