The WHO on Friday urged all countries around the world to disclose the information they possess about the origins of the coronavirus. This comes a week after FBI Director Christopher Wray claimed that the bureau holds the Chinese government responsible for spreading the pandemic that paralyzed the planet in 2020. "If any country has information about the origins of the pandemic, it’s essential for that information to be shared with WHO and the international scientific community," said a WHO statement.
In statements reported by The Guardian, WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the intention is not to blame anyone, rather to find out as much as possible about the pandemic in order to prevent another one from happening: "We want to advance our understanding of how this pandemic started so we can prevent, prepare for and respond to future epidemics and pandemics," he said.
He also stated that, unlike Christopher Wray, the WHO does not hold China responsible for spreading the pandemic, but it is encouraging them to provide any information they had about the virus. Until then, they will keep all theories open about the origins of COVID:
WHO continues to call for China to be transparent in sharing data and to conduct the necessary investigations and share the results. Until then, all hypotheses on the origins of the virus remain on the table.
WHO's top coronavirus researcher frustrated with United States
While Tedros Adhanom called for collaboration from all countries, Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's technical lead on the coronavirus, expressed frustration on Twitter at the feedback the organization received from the United States:
🧵As an American myself and directly involved in the response to #COVID19 pandemic and in the origins studies since day 1, comments by @MarshaBlackburn, @SenatorRisch and others about @WHO and our work are deeply hurtful and inaccurate.
— Maria Van Kerkhove (@mvankerkhove) March 2, 2023
On Friday, she teamed up with with Dr. Tedros to ask the international community to share all the information they have on the origin of COVID-19: "We don't completely have the answers to how this pandemic began and it remains absolutely critical that we continue to focus on this."
In addition, she said that the most urgent task was to study the other variants of the coronavirus, especially those circulating among animals, to find out how an animal could have transmitted the virus to a human being:
Our work continues on this space: looking at studies in humans, looking at studies in animals, looking at studies at the animal human interface, and also looking at potential breaches in biosafety and biosecurity for any of the labs that were working with coronaviruses, particularly where the first cases were detected in Wuhan, China, or elsewhere.
