WHO asks Beijing for “full access” to determine the origin of Covid

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said he was ready to send a new mission of experts to China to uncover the origins of Covid-19, calling in an interview with Financial Times, “full access”. “We press China to provide full access and ask countries to raise the issue in their bilateral meetings [pour inciter Pékin] to cooperate”, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the British newspaper. He explains that the WHO has already requested “in writing” to China “to provide us with information and we are ready to send a team if they allow us to do so.”

The international community has not yet been able to determine with certainty the origin of Covid. If, a priori, the first cases were detected at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China, two theories clash: leak from a laboratory in the city where this virus was studied or intermediate animal having infected people who frequented a local market .

No team has been able to return to China since 2021

A team of specialists under the leadership of the WHO and accompanied by Chinese colleagues investigated in China at the beginning of 2021. In a joint report, they favored the hypothesis of the transmission of this highly contagious virus by an animal which would have played the intermediary between the bat and the human being, perhaps on a market in the Chinese city. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus later claimed that “all hypotheses remained on the table”.

No team has been able to return to China and WHO officials have repeatedly requested additional data.