Published 10:25 IST, February 16th 2023

'Will continue to push until we get the answer': WHO chief on Covid-19 pandemic origin

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said that the organisation would continue pushing until it found an answer to how the Covid-19 pandemic began.

Reported by: Digital Desk
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World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said that the UN health agency would continue pushing until it found a concrete answer to the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. His comments come after a report on Tuesday suggested that WHO had abandoned its search. "We need to continue to push until we get the answer," Ghebreyesus told reporters.

The main point of concern since the pandemic struck back in 2020, has been the mystery of where the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated. It is vital to find the origin of the pandemic to avert future pandemics. Notably, according to official numbers, Covid-19 claimed more than 4.3 million lives worldwide. "Knowing how this pandemic started is very, very important and very crucial," said Ghebreyesus.

An article on the Nature website alleged that the organisation is faced with a lack of cooperation from China, where the outbreak began in late 2019, and the WHO had given up on the search. Nature said that it had learnt that WHO "has quietly shelved the second phase of its much-anticipated scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing ongoing challenges over attempts to conduct crucial studies in China".

Ghebreyesus said he had recently sent a letter to a top official in China "asking for cooperation because we need cooperation and transparency in the information... in order to know how this started." The Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) was created "to conduct an independent assessment of the origins of COVID-19, but also to work more broadly to establish a framework to understand the origins of any future epidemic and pandemic pathogen and the origins in which it emerges," said Van Kerkhove, Infectious Disease Epidemiologist; COVID-19 Technical Lead, Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses Lead, WHO Health Emergencies Programme.

"We will continue to ask for countries to depoliticise this work, but we need cooperation from our colleagues in China to advance this," she said.

Tedros said there were two reasons for not abandoning the origins search. The first was scientific, he said: "We need to know how this started in order to prevent the next one." "The second (is) moral: millions of people lost their lives, and many suffered, and the whole world was taken hostage by a virus. "It's morally very important to know how we lost our loved ones," added the WHO chief.

Investigation suggests China heavily influenced WHO

A report has claimed that World Health Organisation (WHO) officials missed the chance to stop COVID-19 from turning into a pandemic because of an "aggressive" influence campaign run by the Chinese government which comprised efforts by Beijing to control the agency's decision-making, sabotage investigations and even install officials.

The investigation was done by United Kingdom-based The Sunday Times and it claimed that the WHO's independence had been hampered prior to the global spread of the deadly Coronavirus in early 2020. The report claimed that WHO failed to challenge the misinformation campaign by China and delayed in declaring an emergency and worked against travel bans on China. The investigation also suggested that China used financial leverage on poorer nations to install favoured people in roles.

It has also been suggested that WHO officials agreed to a 'backroom deal' with Beijing to water down the inquiry into the origins of COVID-19. This meant steering scientists away from the theory Coronavirus actually escaped from a Wuhan laboratory, rather than coming from wild animals in a wet market in the city in December 2019.

Updated 10:25 IST, February 16th 2023

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