An international team of scientists is calling for a new investigation into the origin of the virus that causes COVID-19 – arguing that the current investigation led by the World Health Organization by the Chinese government is too limited to be credible.
The group led by the WTO – which traveled to Wuhan earlier this year – had “insufficient access” during the investigation, the group said in an open letter received by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.
‘We want to make the public aware that half of the joint team convened in the process is made up of Chinese citizens whose scientific independence may be restricted, and that international members of the joint team had to rely on information which the Chinese authorities have chosen to share with them, and that any joint team report must be approved by both the Chinese and international members of the joint team, ”reads the letter.
The letter, signed by virologists, biologists and public health experts from countries ranging from France to India, further states that the WTO team did not have the “independence” to properly investigate.
“We therefore concluded that the joint team did not have the mandate, independence or the necessary access to conduct a full and unrestricted investigation into all the relevant SARS-CoV-2 origin hypotheses – whether natural distribution or laboratory / research-related incident, ”reads the letter.
Meanwhile, the WHO-led team was supposed to release an interim report on its own findings – but scrapped the plan and would rather release the full report, the Wall Street Journal revealed.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on February 12 that the team would release the interim report summarizing its mission. The WTO team now plans to publish the summary when it releases the full final report in the coming weeks, according to a WTO spokesperson.
“By definition, a summary report does not contain all the details,” said dr. Ben Embarek, a food safety scientist who led the team, told the newspaper. ‘So there [is] so much interest in this report, a summary would not satisfy the curiosity of the readers. ”
Earlier this month, a scientist in the WTO-led team said that the virus probably started in China and that it probably came from bats – despite the fact that the WTO’s official findings were unconvincing.
The news comes as the U.S. lobby calls for more transparency in the investigation, and officials say the Wuhan mission report should be investigated.
Meanwhile, China is urging similar WHO-led missions to other countries, including the US, to investigate whether COVID-19 could possibly have originated in frozen food sent to Wuhan, according to the Journal.