The World Health Organization, which is facing intense international pressure and criticism, has abandoned plans to release a summary report on its investigation into the possible origin of the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.
Instead, the United Nations Health Agency is skipping the summary report and plans to release a full report by the week of March 15. The WHO had earlier said it would release a summary report in mid-February.
“By definition, a summary report does not contain all the details,” said dr. Ben Embarek, a WHO expert who led the investigation, told The Wall Street Journal. ‘So there [is] so much interest in this report, a summary would not satisfy the curiosity of the readers. ”
At a press conference on Friday, the executive director of the WHO’s emergency program, Mike Ryan, reiterated the thinking, saying that the discussion of right after the full report would facilitate discussion, given the tremendous demand for the findings of the inquiry.
The limited information on the findings of the investigation released so far has already sparked intense criticism and fueled tensions between the US and China.
Dangerous sin
The investigation was conducted between mid-January and early February in Wuhan, China, by a team of international researchers and WHO experts, where the pandemic first occurred in December 2019. The WHO team underwent a 14-day quarantine upon their arrival and thereafter spent about 12 days doing fieldwork in the city.
They visited places such as the infamous Huanan seafood market, where many of the first cases of COVID-19 were linked, as well as the hospital where the first patients sought treatment. The team also visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which became the focus of turbulent speculation that SARS-CoV-2 had escaped from a laboratory – possibly after being picked up during research on coronaviruses in bats and / or deliberately designed to infect humans. Although virologists around the world have noted that this statement is unlikely – a natural overflow event is considered the most likely origin – they note that it is impossible to exclude it without further information.
At a February 9 press conference in Wuhan, the WTO team all said they had indeed ruled it out. Embarek calls the laboratory’s hypothesis ‘extremely unlikely’ and suggests that it is not necessary to pursue the idea further. Instead, Embarek supported researchers’ earlier thinking and called the natural flood hypothesis the ‘most likely pathway’ SARS-CoV-2 had for humans. Meanwhile, Chinese scientists have raised the possibility that the virus could be introduced into the country via frozen cargo – an idea that international researchers see as unsupported by data.
When the WTO team members arrive in their home countries again, it seems that they are softening conclusions. In a press conference it appears that the director-general of the WTO, dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, traced Embarek’s earlier comments on the hypothesis of the laboratory. “Some questions have been raised about whether some hypotheses have been discarded,” Tedros said. “After talking to some members of the team, I want to confirm that all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and study. Some of the work may fall outside the scope and scope of this mission. ”
“Deep worries”
Other scientists and experts provided the research and comment, saying the team did not provide the necessary unrestricted access to critical sites and data to reach any conclusions. One of the team’s own members reinforced this criticism. In the media interviews, Dominic Dwyer, a member of the WHO investigation team, reported that Chinese officials withheld important unfounded data that the team requested about the very first COVID-19 cases identified in Wuhan.
U.S. officials have also expressed skepticism about the integrity of the WHO’s inquiry. In a statement on February 13, Jake Sullivan, a national security adviser, said: “We are deeply concerned about the manner in which the early findings of the COVID-19 investigation were communicated and questions about the process to achieve them. It is imperative that this report be independent, with expert findings without intervention or change by the Chinese government. ”
Similarly, Foreign Minister Antony Blinken said in an interview with PBS this week that “China was at the beginning of this crisis, when it mattered most, or even today, as forward investigations try to the bottom of what happened. ”
In the latest comments at the press conference on Friday, Tedros responded to the calls for transparency, saying that everything that happened during the team’s trip to Wuhan will be presented in full in the upcoming report.