Twenty-six scientists today issued an open letter calling for the reopening of an international investigation into the source of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19, Neovirus pneumonia). They said a team of WHO experts who went to Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, more than a month ago to investigate the source of the outbreak failed to grasp the full picture, including whether the new coronavirus had escaped from the laboratory, and it was difficult to get to the truth.
The U.S. government has also advocated for a more open and transparent investigation into the source of the outbreak after canceling its withdrawal from the WHO, forecasting that it will carefully review the report of the WHO team’s investigation in Wuhan and urging China to release all relevant information, including the first confirmed or earlier suspected cases in December 2019.
While insisting that they are fully cooperating with WHO, the Chinese authorities are advocating that a team of WHO experts also traveled to the United States and other countries to investigate whether the new coronavirus originated outside of mainland China and was transmitted to Wuhan through frozen Food.
WHO Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Feb. 12 that the WHO team may release an interim report every other week that briefly describes the source of the outbreak investigation, and the full report is expected to come out in a few weeks. Danish food scientist Peter Ben Embarek, who led the WHO team of experts, said the team had changed its plans and cancelled the interim report, intending to publish a summary with the full report.
Ben Embarek said that by definition, the summary report does not contain all the details, “since there is a lot of interest in this report, only publishing the summary will not satisfy the curiosity of readers”.
A WHO spokesman said the full report containing “important findings” from the WHO’s source investigation will be released within a few weeks.
The report points out that the WHO team of experts worked with mainland Chinese scientists and officials when they went to Wuhan to investigate, and that the investigation report needs to be approved by the Chinese side before it can be released. The midterm report was delayed while the Wuhan outbreak investigation continued to stir controversy in political and scientific circles.
In an open letter, 26 scientists and experts in virology, zoology, microbiology and other fields said it was “virtually impossible” for the WHO team of experts to fully investigate and that the report, which would require Chinese approval, was likely the product of a political compromise.
In the letter, the co-signers, who are from France, the United States, India, Australia and other countries, wrote that a credible investigation would require confidential interviews, full access to medical records of the first confirmed and suspected 2019 coronavirus patients in mainland China and other steps, and that investigators should be allowed access to all records of laboratory maintenance, personnel, animal breeding and experimentation involved in coronavirus research.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry described the open letter as “a change of Soup without a change of Medicine,” and said the WHO team’s visit to Wuhan to investigate the source of the outbreak had determined that the possibility of a laboratory leak was “extremely low” and that further investigation was unnecessary.
The newspaper wrote that Beijing‘s cooperation is needed to restart the investigation, and many authoritative infectious disease experts doubt the claim that the 2019 coronavirus disease originated from a laboratory accident. 26 scientists may not get a satisfactory answer to their demands, but the letter still conveys the voice of the U.S. and British governments and many scientists around the world who are dissatisfied with the lack of information provided by the WHO expert team in mainland China.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview with the Public Television Network (PBS) on March 3: “Whether at the beginning of the Epidemic crisis or now as investigators try to get to the bottom of it, mainland China has not been fully effective in being open and transparent.”
Recent Comments