WHO chief Tedros asks China for ‘full access’ to solve COVID-19 origins

The controversy around the origin of the deadly SARS-CoV-2 that brought the world to a standstill and people to their knees due to the mounting death toll, COVID-19 hospital admissions, rampant loss of human lives and closure of businesses due to the lockdown in the last two years, is back again in the focus. The chief of the World Health Organization (WHO) has asked China, where the novel virus was found to have leaked in Wuhan, to allow "full access" to the second team that will probe the pandemic. 

WHO's demands for sharing of full genetic information earlier had attracted backlash from China. Director of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Shen Hongbing had labelled Tedros' request as “offensive and disrespectful,” accusing the WHO of “attempting to smear China” and politicising the COVID-19. 

WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, and to date, there are lingering questions about the origin of the dangerous pathogen that claimed lives of billions, piled deadbodies in mortuaries, on the streets, tattered economies, closed borders, and brought lives to a halt worldwide. 

A woman breaks down during cremation of a relative during 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Credit: AP

Genesis of coronavirus 'still unclear'

WHO's head, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says that the genesis of the coronavirus pandemic still remains unclear nearly four years since the first COVID-19 cases prompted the central government of China to impose a lockdown in Wuhan and other cities in Hubei for containment of what went on to become the deadliest and most contagious virus of the century.

WHO has said that Beijing must stand ready to offer more information on the origins of COVID-19 as the agency will soon begin a second probe into the SARS-CoV-2's global spread. 

African National Defense Forces patrol mens hostels to instate stay-at-home order amid lockdown. Credit: AP

“We’re pressing China to give full access, and we are asking countries to raise it during their bilateral meetings — [to urge Beijing] to co-operate,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a conference. “We have already asked in writing to give us information . . . and also [are] willing to send a team if they allow us to do so," he stressed. 

People in protective gear attend funeral of a loved one at a cemetory on outskirts of city of Ghaemshahr north of Iran. Credit: AP

Volunteers stitching face masks amid shoratge during the pandemic. Credit: AP

While Tedros made remarks about the mysterious origin of the SARS-CoV-2, health authorities were updating the vaccines due to the sudden rise in coronavirus cases in some countries. Though, the WHO agrees that the world is no longer in the "acute phase of the pandemic."

On May 5 this year, WHO's Director-General, “with great hope," announced an end to COVID-19 as a public health emergency. In a surreal speech at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva, Tedros said that until last week-then, COVID-19 had claimed a life "every three minutes – and that’s just the deaths we know about." While the pandemic ended, the cumulative cases worldwide stood at 765,222,932, with seven million deaths. 

WHO team had "insufficient access to adequately investigate possible sources of the new virus, including whether it slipped from a laboratory," two dozen scientists in a joint letter.

On Saturday, the global health agency iterated that the countries worldwide must keep a watch on the cases of the highly mutated BA.2.86 and other Omicron subvariants. WHO also plans to discuss the coronavirus at the UN’s General Assembly in New York, scheduled for the upcoming week. 

Morgue workers disposing COVID-19 infected body in Behesht-e-zahra cemetery. Credit: AP

New graves being constructed during the pandemic. Credit: AP

In an interview with FT paper, Tedros said that in 2020, he travelled to China and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping to convince him to allow WHO's first COVID-19 mission comprising experts to investigate the origin of the Wuhan wet foods market. There were two theories on the table, one a leak from the virology laboratory and the other a zoonotic jump from an animal to a human. 

“Unless we get evidence beyond reasonable doubt, we cannot just say this or that,” Tedros told the paper. But “we will get the answer. It’s a matter of time," he assured.

'All hypotheses on the table'

After concluding the 4-weeks investigation in 2021, the WHO program manager and mission leader Peter Ben Embarek and team member Marion Koopmans held a press conference in Wuhan to summarize the mission's findings on Feb. 9 . It is "extremely unlikely" that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan Institute of Virology, they said.

Although, WHO in its finding, said that the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 may have arrived in Wuhan on frozen food was more likely. But the reporters gathered there demanded more evidency for total rejection of the lab theory.

Appearing publicly a week later, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that "all hypotheses are on the table" with respect to the SARS-CoV-2 origin. He revealed that the WHO mission did not get access to all data, for instance, the first 92 Chinese patients who demonstrated flu-like respiratory symptoms during the earliest COVID-19 cases in 2019 that resembled pneumonia. 

WHO epidemiologist and food safety scientist, Ben Embarek, who toured Huanan market, a wholesale market selling frozen products in China as a part of WHO mission, noted that the lab accident is one hypothesis but the other was that there were several laboratories in and around Wuhan that were working with coronavirus. 

Security guard watches neighbourhood in Wuhan, Beijing. Credit: AP

WHO findings also suggest that the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 "preceded the initial detection of cases by several weeks," inplying the spread goes back to 2019. Some of the suspected positive samples were detected even earlier than the first case in Wuhan, suggesting the possibility of missed circulation in other countries." 

SARS-CoV-2 originated from 'potential lab incident': FBI 

FBI Director Chris Wray previously claimed that Beijing has stymied efforts by the US and others to probe the origins of the coronavirus. Wray in televised interview claimed that COVID-19 originated from a "potential lab incident" in Wuhan but the Chinese government has interfered with the investigation. 

"The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Wray said in televised interview. “I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here," he added. Former US President Donald Trump, in an interview said that he was "probably the first one" to figure out that the coronavirus originated in a lab leak in China. 

"Nobody knew what it was. We heard stories, [about] China, I was probably the first one. I said it came from the lab in Wuhan. I knew that. For one thing, you saw body bags all over the place around that lab. There were body bags all over that area, and nobody talks about it," Trump said. 

Chief of the COVID-19 commission at prestigious medical journal The Lancet, Jeffrey Sachs, made similar claims at a conference hosted by the think tank GATE, in Spain. Coronavirus did not originate in nature or animal, he purported, negating the results from the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease conducted from 2019. The virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, Beijing, the then epicenter of the disease, he said. While the WHO believed that coronavirus probably emerged in bats and then jumped off to humans via an intermediary animal. Sachs told the GATE conference, “It’s a blunder in my view of biotech, not an accident of a natural spillover."

World Health Organization investigators arrived in Wuhan. Credit: AP

Meanwhile, the ex Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was in limelight for his role in funding research at a laboratory that many speculated was the one where the coronavirus leaked from. Fauci, Biden administration's former infectious diseases expert, admitted that the United States funded the labs in Wuhan with hundreds of thousands of dollars for virology research. US-based EcoHealth Alliance was awarded a grant in 2014 to look into possible coronaviruses from bats, Fauci revealed, dismissing claims that there was gain-of-function (GOF) research taking place in the laboratory that caused an accidental leak. 

A report on the origins of coronavirus, commissioned by President Joe Biden and released by the National Intelligence Director’s Office in August 2021 stated that the US intelligence agency accessed with "moderate confidence" that 2019 virus that infected humans came from a lab-associated incident. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, at a conference said that China has “always been open and transparent” adding that US conclusions have "no credibility."