Multiple countries have uncovered evidence that the virus was circulating months earlier than originally thought. trying to exert political pressure on the members of the WHO expert group?' asked Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian. 'The US has been speaking out on the report. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a recent CNN interview.Ĭhina rejected that criticism and accused the US of 'exerting political pressure' on the fact-finding mission experts. 'We've got real concerns about the methodology and the process that went into that report, including the fact that the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it,' U.S. Repeated delays in the report's release have raised questions about whether the Chinese side was trying to skew its conclusions. Meanwhile, Dr Anthony Fauci, President Biden's chief medical adviser, revealed he has 'concerns' over the WHO's controversial fact-finding mission. In March, New York Republican Representative Lee Zeldin slammed China for 'covering up to the world the pandemic's origins', while the WHO 'has played along time and time again'. US officials, particularly from the Trump administration, have put forward the lab leak theory as the 'most plausible' explanation for the pandemic's origin. The report ruled out that the virus could have been leaked from a lab and instead gave credit to the theory that it could have been imported on frozen meat - a theory pushed by Beijing as it places blame for the pandemic outside its borders.Īmid a storm of criticism, WHO chief Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus - whose own cozy links to China have come under scrutiny - backtracked, saying that 'all theories' including the laboratory leak remain on the table. The release of the WHO-China report was repeatedly delayed, raising questions about whether the Chinese side was trying to skew the conclusions to prevent blame for the pandemic falling on China.Ĭritics including ex-President Trump have accused the WHO of parroting Chinese propaganda on the virus since the outbreak was first announced to the world. Pictured: Security personnel keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology during visit by the WHO team The experts also accused the World Health Organization's probe into the origins of the deadly virus of failing to make a 'balanced consideration' of the theory that it may have come from a laboratory incident. 'In this time of unfortunate anti-Asian sentiment in some countries, we note that at the beginning of the pandemic, it was Chinese doctors, scientists, journalists, and citizens who shared with the world crucial information about the spread of the virus-often at great personal cost.' 'We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data,' the scientists said, adding that an intellectually rigorous and dispassionate investigation needed to take place.
#More life has it leaked series#
There are a variety of different ideas about the origin of the virus including a series of conspiracy theories. 'Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable,' the scientists including David Relman, professor of microbiology at Stanford, said in a letter to the journal Science. 'More investigation is still needed to determine the origins of the pandemic,' said the 18 leading scientists, including Ravindra Gupta, a clinical microbiologist at the University of Cambridge, and Jesse Bloom, who studies the evolution of viruses at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
0 kommentar(er)
