BEIJING – A World Health Organization team investigating the origins of Covid-19 intends to drop an interim report on its recent mission to China amid growing tensions between Beijing and Washington over the investigation and an appeal by an international group of people for a new probe.
The group of two dozen scientists is requesting an open letter on Thursday for a new international investigation. They say the WHO team that completed a mission to Wuhan last month – the Chinese city where the first known cases were found – did not have enough access to properly investigate possible sources of the new coronavirus, including if it slipped from a laboratory.
Their call comes at a time when the US – which has recently reversed a decision to leave the WHO – is lobbying for greater transparency in the investigation, saying it expects to examine the report on the Wuhan mission and urging China to publish all relevant data, including on the first infection confirmed in December 2019 and potential previous infections.
Meanwhile, Beijing is calling for similar WHO-led missions to other countries, including the United States, to investigate whether the virus could have originated outside China and spread to Wuhan by packing frozen food.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesussaid on February 12 said the team would publish an interim report summarizing the Wuhan mission, possibly next week, with a full report weeks later. But that summary report has not yet been published, and the WHO team is canceling that plan, said Peter Ben Embarek, the food safety scientist who led the team. The WHO team plans to publish a summary along with the full final report, he said. This final report “will be published in the coming weeks and will include key findings,” a WHO spokesman said.