US, UK and other nations criticise WHO's coronavirus origin report, berate China

The United States, the United Kingdom and at least 12 other countries have condemned the World Health Organization's (WHO) latest report on the novel coronavirus' origin, as well as berated China for failing to disclose the raw data to the WHO’s investigative teams for probing initial cases from the outbreak. Earlier in an interview with Australia’s News9, infectious disease expert Dominic Dwyer, who is a part of the WHO probing team said that China refused to hand over the data from the time when the first 174 COVID-19 cases were identified in Wuhan. Dwyer said that coronavirus was in circulation for over several weeks prior to the Huanan Seafood Market outbreak. “Now, whether we were shown everything? You can never know. The group wasn’t designed to go and do a forensic examination of lab practice.” 

Objecting to the latest report by WHO that claimed that the novel coronavirus most likely jumped from animal to human, and a lab leak was “extremely unlikely”, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday at a presser that the US President Joe Biden believes that the country deserves “better information” from the global health agency than that the SARS-CoV-2 “tranmitted from an animal”. "I think he believes the American people, the global community, the medical experts, the doctors, all of the people who have been working to save lives, the families who have lost loved ones, all deserve greater transparency," Psaki told reporters at the White House briefing.

Psaki’s press statement came shortly after at least 12 nations signed a separate statement, which includes Canada and Australia, criticising the WHO’s conclusions, and calling for a transparent evaluation. The European Union meanwhile, called out at China for providing better access to the researchers to investigate the deadly virus that has claimed more than 2.8 million lives worldwide and has exhausted and drained the healthcare workers, and left economies in shackles. "They deserve better information," Psaki said at the press conference, adding that there shall be steps that are taken by the global community to provide that. 

Lab leak 'extremely unlikely'

The 120-page WHO report went on to suggest that the coronavirus pandemic was started by an intermediate animal host, one raised on a farm, and it was yet to be determined if the animal was infected by a bat which is a confirmed host of zoonotic coronavirus. The animal, “most likely” an alive one may have transmitted the disease to a human at the Wuhan Wet market where the outbreak first happened in December 2019. Scientists at the global health agency also ruled out the possibility of the cold chain transmission as “minimal” or very low. 

Head of the WHO mission, Peter Ben Embarek told a press conference that it was also “extremely unlikely” that the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak occurred due to a laboratory leak, as previously suggested by the former Trump administration. Studies had earlier shown that the coronaviruses highly related to SARS-CoV-2 were mostly found in bats and pangolins. The World Health Organization ascertained that there was increasing evidence following a probe about the likelihood of an animal-human spill.