The World Health Organization (WHO) has quietly shelved the second phase of its investigation into the origins of the covid pandemic.
The organization cited ongoing challenges over attempts to get information from Chinese sources.
“Their hands are really tied,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, told the scientific journal Nature. Without access to China, researchers said it may be impossible to understand how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 first infected people.The next phase of the investigation was intended as a follow-up to research conducted in January 2021 by an international team of experts convened by the WHO in Wuhan, China, where the virus that causes COVID-19 was first detected. The team released a report in March outlining four possible scenarios, with the most likely pointing to the virus spreading from bats to people. But the follow-up trip to further analyze evidence has been scrapped.“There is no phase two,” Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist at the WHO, told Nature. “The politics across the world of this really hampered progress on understanding the origins.” The Chinese ministry of foreign affairs did not respond to the journal’s requests for comment.
WHO recommended a deeper probe into whether a lab accident may be to blame for releasing the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is the cause of the covid pandemic after backlash abounded from their original report, which read as if the Chinese crafted it.
That stance marks a sharp reversal of the U.N. health agency’s initial assessment of the pandemic’s origins, and comes after many critics accused WHO of being too quick to dismiss or underplay a lab-leak theory that put Chinese officials on the defensive.WHO concluded last year that it was “extremely unlikely” COVID-19 might have spilled into humans in the city of Wuhan from a lab. Many scientists suspect the coronavirus jumped into people from bats, possibly via another animal.
There is continuing research, however, that appears to be focused on the animal-origins hypothesis.
Researchers are undertaking some work to pin down a timeline of the virus’s initial spread. This includes efforts to trap bats in regions bordering China in search of viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2; experimental studies to help narrow down which animals are susceptible to the virus and could be hosts; and testing of archived wastewater and blood samples collected around the world in late 2019 and early 2020.But researchers say that too much time has passed to gather some of the data needed to pinpoint where the virus originated.
Meanwhile, House Republicans are beginning their investigation into the origins of the covid pandemic by requesting documents and testimony for current and former Biden administration officials.
The Republican chairmen of the House Oversight Committee and the Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic are seeking information, including from Dr. Anthony Fauci, concerning the idea that the coronavirus leaked accidentally from a Chinese lab.“This investigation must begin with where and how this virus came about so that we can attempt to predict, prepare or prevent it from happening again,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, chair of the virus subcommittee, said in a statement on Monday.Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the oversight committee, said Republicans will “follow the facts” and “hold U.S. government officials that took part in any sort of cover-up accountable.”
I have been covering the reasonable, and in my view probable, lab origin for the covid pandemic since February of 2020, when I noted that Chinese university researchers believed the virus might originate from a government laboratory in Wuhan.
Other sign-posts on the road to reaching this sensible conclusion are:
It will be interesting to see where the Republican investigation leads, which I suspect will be the most accurate of the continuing probes.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY