Too many “impediments”, and not enough access… has the World Health Organization (WHO) abandoned its investigation into the origins of Sars-Cov-2? A statement by one of the organization’s officials, castigating the ill will of States, has sown doubt… Even forcing the head of the international institution to deny it, despite the institution’s real difficulties in carrying out its research on the origins of Covid-19.
While the WHO was to specify the results of an inconclusive first phase of research carried out in China, in January 2021, a statement to Naturethe prestigious scientific journal, has indeed set fire to the powder this Tuesday, while the UN regularly claims to be prevented in its mission on the origins of the coronavirus.
“Policies around the world on this have really hampered progress in understanding the origins of Sars-Cov-2,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, epidemiologist at WHO, before asserting that the “phase 2” of the UN investigations was “null and void”.
No stopping, but difficulties
In response, this Wednesday the boss of the organization personally undertook to do everything to obtain “an answer” on the origins of Covid-19, denying any abandonment of research. “There is a scientific and moral dimension to this problem and we must keep pushing until we have the answer,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
The WHO boss pointed out that he had recently sent an official email to a senior Chinese official again asking for Beijing’s collaboration in trying to find where and when the Covid-19 virus started to spread. spread to become the worst pandemic in a century, killing millions of people and crippling tens of millions more.
Currently in the in-depth phase, the WHO investigation began in 2021, after China accepted that a team from the institution go to its territory, in Wuhan, epicenter of the start of the epidemic, at the cost of significant access restrictions, and while the Trump administration essentially accused the country of having brought out the virus.
From this first phase of investigation, the WHO had concluded that the virus had most probably first circulated in bats, before becoming transmissible to humans, thanks to natural mutations, potentially acquired by contaminating other animal species. These animals have not been identified to date. The track of a natural virus escaped from a laboratory, is considered credible, but very unlikely. However, the WHO ruled without having access to the biological infrastructures of the country.
Phase 2 of the WHO investigation must refine these initial results, in particular thanks to the capture of bats – outside Chinese territory, access restriction requires. Extensive research had to be carried out on the genetic heritage of animals that could represent vectors for humans. And sewage and blood samples collected at the end of 2019 were also to be tested.
From August 2021, in Nature, WHO investigators had indicated that at this rate, it would very quickly become impossible to determine how Sars-Cov-2 ended up infecting the human species. “It becomes more and more difficult because the more time passes, the more difficult it is to really understand what happened in these early stages of the pandemic”, said this Wednesday the doctor Maria Van Kerkhove, in charge of the fight against the pandemic at the WHO, author of the first statements suggesting the abandonment of the investigation.