Covid origins investigation inconclusive, says WHO
A long-running World Health Organization investigation into the origins of Covid-19 has been unable to conclude where the virus came from because of a refusal to share information by China and intelligence agencies.
An independent panel found that the most likely scientific explanation for the emergence of Covid-19 was direct transmission from bats to humans, or via an intermediary animal sold at the Wuhan wet market where the first cases emerged in December 2019, the WHO announced on Friday.
'Most scientific data and accessible published scientific evidence currently supports this hypothesis, however [we] are not currently able to conclude when, where and how Sars Cov-2 entered the human population,' Dr Marietjie Venter, Chair The Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), told a press conference.
Dr Venter added that the Wuhan Huanan seafood market had played a 'significant role' in the spread of the virus, and that 60 per cent of early cases could conclusively be traced back to the site. She added that no widespread human or animal cases had been recorded anywhere else before December 2019.
The pandemic killed an estimated 20 million people while shredding economies and crippling health systems, according to the WHO. Understanding its origins is seen as key to preventing future pandemics.
The panel was unable to rule out the possibility that the virus emerged from a laboratory leak in Wuhan due to a lack of cooperation from Chinese authorities and other governments who had been unwilling to share intelligence reports, the health agency said.
'Much of the information needed to investigate this hypothesis has not been made available to WHO or SAGO, despite repeated requests to the government of China,' said Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, the WHO's Director General.
'Despite our repeated requests, China hasn't provided hundreds of viral sequences from individuals with Covid-19 early in the pandemic, more detailed information on animals sold at markets in Wuhan, and information on work done and biosafety conditions at laboratories in Wuhan,' he said.
The CIA said in January that Covid-19 was 'more likely' to have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a highly secure laboratory located in the heart of the city where the first cases of Covid-19 were recorded, than to have come from animals.
Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, believes there is an 80-90 per cent chance that coronavirus accidentally leaked from a Chinese lab, German media reported earlier this year.
Dr Tedros said: 'WHO is also aware of intelligence reports performed by other governments around the world on the origins of Covid-19, we have also requested access to those reports [....] and have not had access to [them] or their underlying data.'
As well as the lab leak and zoonotic spillover explanations, the committee also investigated two other hypotheses.
One, which was promoted by Beijing in the early days of the pandemic, is the claim that Covid-19 was transmitted via frozen food products imported into China.
Dr Venter said that 'more data is required to prove this hypothesis'.
A fourth theory – popular on social media – is that the pandemic was the result of a deliberate laboratory manipulation of the virus.
'SAGO analysed the genomic structure of the virus and did not find scientific evidence supporting this hypothesis. There's also evidence that these mutations and recombinations occur in nature,' Dr Venter said.
The WHO's efforts to uncover the origins of Covid have long been shrouded in doubt, largely because of China's refusal to share information with investigators.
After four years of investigation, 'all hypotheses remain on the table,' said Dr Tedros.
He added that the WHO continued to appeal to Beijing and other countries with information about the origins of Covid-19 to share the information openly, in the interests of protecting the world from future pandemics.
The full SAGO report was published on Friday. Its authors concluded that 'although evidence exists that has improved our understanding of the early and subsequent evolution of the virus in humans and animals, significant data gaps remain which preclude SAGO from concluding with certainty how SARS-CoV-2 initially entered the human population'.
The panel urged China and the global scientific community to 'prioritise further work on understanding the origins of Covid-19 and for all countries to comprehensively study future emergences of unknown pathogens'.
The full SAGO report was being published on Friday.
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