WHO investigators to scrap plans for interim report on the probe of Covid-19 origin

Their appeal comes because the US – which recently made a decision to leave the WHO – is turning around for greater transparency in the investigation, saying it is waiting to investigate the report on the Wuhan mission, and insists that China all disclose relevant data, including the first confirmed infections in December 2019 and potential earlier infections.

Beijing, meanwhile, is campaigning for similar WHO-led missions to other countries, including the US, to investigate whether the virus could have originated outside China and spread to Wuhan via packaged food.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on February 12 that the team would issue an interim report summarizing the Wuhan mission, possibly next week, with a full report in the coming weeks. But the summary report has yet to be published and the WTO team is now scrapping the plan, says Peter Ben Embarek, the food safety scientist who led the team. The WTO team plans to publish a summary along with the full final report, he said. The final report “will be published in the coming weeks and will contain important findings,” a WTO spokesman said.

“By definition, a summary report does not contain all the details,” said dr. Ben Embarek said. ‘So there [is] so much interest in this report, a summary would not satisfy the curiosity of the readers. ”

The delay in announcing the findings and recommendations of the Wuhan mission, which is being worked on with Chinese scientists and officials who will have to approve any report, comes against the backdrop of ongoing political and scientific controversy surrounding the search for the origins of the Wuhan mission. pandemic.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry described the open letter as ‘old wine in new bottles’ that accepted guilt and had scientific credibility, saying the Wuhan mission concluded that a laboratory origin was ‘extremely unlikely’. and that it is not worth further. Neither the Foreign Ministry nor the National Health Commission in China responded to requests for comment on the Wuhan mission report.

According to a preliminary copy of the open letter, the group of 26 scientists and other experts in fields, including virology, zoology and microbiology, said that it was “anything but impossible” for the WHO team to conduct a full investigation, and that any report likely political compromises as it had to be approved by the Chinese side.

A credible investigation requires, among other things, confidential interviews and full access to hospital records of confirmed and potential Chinese coronavirus cases at the end of 2019, when the outbreak was first identified in Wuhan, reads the letter from experts from France, USA, India is signed. , Australia and other countries.

Researchers should also be allowed to view records, including maintenance, staff, livestock and experiment files from all coronavirus laboratories, the letter said.

“We can not afford an investigation into the origins of the pandemic that is less than absolutely thorough and credible,” the letter said. “Efforts to date are not a thorough, credible and transparent investigation.”

The appeal is unlikely to gain traction, as Beijing’s cooperation is needed in the future. In addition, many leading experts in infectious diseases are skeptical that a laboratory accident could probably explain the origin of the pandemic.

It is still an expression of greater dissatisfaction expressed by the US and British governments and many scientists worldwide, that China has provided too little information and data to the WHO to help researchers determine where the virus originates Has and how it jumped for people.

“We are deeply concerned about the way in which the early findings of the Covid-19 investigation were communicated and questions about the underlying process to achieve them,” said Ned Price, spokesman for the Department of State. “It is essential that this report is independent, with expert findings without intervention or change by Chinese authorities to better understand this pandemic and prepare for the next one.”

China has repeatedly said it is fully cooperating with the WHO and denies allegations, including officials from the Trump administration, that the virus may have originated from a research facility in Wuhan, at least one of which specializes in coronaviruses.

The WHO team said during the mission last month that its members and their Chinese counterparts analyzed the leading hypotheses to determine where future research should focus. At the end of the mission, team leaders said they should investigate ways in which the virus could spread from various small mammals, and that they would not recommend further research into a possible laboratory accident, a theory that makes it “extremely unlikely” ” regard.

The conclusion was reached by Beijing, as well as scientists in various countries, that the virus spreads naturally – probably from bats, then possibly by another animal, to humans – and dismisses the laboratory hypothesis as a politically motivated smear.

Since their return from China, some WHO investigators have qualified their conclusions, saying they do not have the mandate, expertise or data to conduct a full audit of any laboratory. The team also did not have important information about the first confirmed cases, or patients who had been hospitalized in advance with similar symptoms.

A laboratory accident is ‘definitely not off the table’, said dr. Ben Embarek said at a seminar last week. Dr Tedros said in February after the team’s trip that “all hypotheses remain open and need further analysis.”

The signatories of the open letter are mostly members of a broader group, led by French scientists, who have been sharing research articles and other information about Covid-19 since about December. No one is related to the WHO investigation.

Signatories include Etienne Decroly and Bruno Canard, molecular virologists at AFMB Lab, part of the University of Aix-Marseille and the French National Center for Scientific Research, the French research agency of France.

Dr Decroly said he became involved after concluding that based on available data it was impossible to determine whether SARS-CoV-2 ‘was due to a zoonosis of a wild viral strain or an accidental escape from experimental strains. ‘

The letter was co-organized by Gilles Demaneuf, a French data scientist based in New Zealand, and Jamie Metzl, a US senior fellow on the Atlantic Council and WHO adviser on human genome editing.

Leading critics of the laboratory hypothesis have published new research in recent weeks on coronaviruses of bats found in Southeast Asia and Japan, and according to them show that SARS-CoV-2 probably evolved naturally to infect humans.

Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane University School of Medicine who was involved in the research, said he and other colleagues initially considered the possibility of a leak or accident from a laboratory, but eventually found it almost impossible. regard.

Biden’s government has not publicly reiterated its predecessor’s specific allegations about Wuhan laboratories.

Signatories of the open letter say they do not support any hypothesis, but think it is premature to rule out the possibility of a leak or accident at or in connection with a research facility such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV, which is high , to exclude. safety laboratories and has conducted extensive research on bat coronaviruses.

Scientists from WIV deny that the virus came from there and said that before the pandemic they did not store or work on SARS-CoV-2, and none of their staff tested positive for the virus.

Signatories said investigators should look at several possible scenarios, including whether a laboratory worker became infected with a virus that develops naturally while sampling bats in the wild, during the transport of infected animals or during the disposal of laboratory waste.

They also said investigators should investigate whether SARS-CoV-2 could possibly have resulted from “profit-making” experiments, in which viruses found in nature are genetically engineered to see if they could become more contagious or deadly to humans.

Write to Drew Hinshaw at [email protected] and Jeremy Page at [email protected]