China delays approval of international experts by WHO to investigate origins of COVID-19

China has still not approved a list of international experts submitted to it by the World Health Organisation, which will constitute a team of experts to investigate the origin of coronavirus in the country. WHO executive director Mike Ryan said at a special meeting of the executive board on Monday that the organisation has selected expert candidates from around the world for the mission and it was up to China to decide who would be on the international team and when they should visit the country.

Back in May, the World Health Assembly (WHA), the decision-making body of the WHO, passed a unanimous resolution to probe the origin of the virus. China also backed the resolution after denying it a couple of times. In August, a two-member team from the WHO visited China and completed the groundwork for the investigation into the animal source of COVID-19 which first emerged in Wuhan last year and later became a global pandemic.

At the special meeting on Monday, representatives from the United States, the European Union, and Australia pushed the WHO to send the team and share more details about the mission. But, observers said from an international legal perspective, the global health body cannot send a team into a member state without its permission.

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Trump blames China for COVID-19 outbreak

WHO has faced severe criticism, especially from US President Donald Trump, for being a “puppet of China” and not acting in time to control the COVID-19 outbreak when it emerged in Wuhan. The Trump administration halted funding for WHO and formally notified the UN of its decision to withdraw the United States from the world health body. Washington has slammed the WHO’s reliance on Beijing’s so-called early reports which took several weeks to appear after human-to-human transmission of the disease was confirmed.

Chin has denied Trump's allegations that the virus has escaped from a bio-lab in Wuhan and that it emanated from a wet market in the city from bats or pangolins before infecting humans. Instead, China shifted the blame saying that the fatal disease may have originated elsewhere in the world and surfaced in Wuhan.

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(Image credits: AP)