WHO to scrap interim report on virus origins – report

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a World Health Organization team investigating Covid’s origins is planning to scrap an interim report on its recent mission to China amid mounting tensions between Beijing and Washington over the investigation and an appeal from one international group of scientists for a new inquiry.

It reports that a group of two dozen scientists have written an open letter calling for a new international inquiry, claiming that the WHO team that was in Wuhan last month had insufficient access to investigate conceivable sources of the virus, including a possible laboratory leak.

In Geneva, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said in via email: “The full report is expected in coming weeks”.

No further information was immediately available about the reasons for the delay in publishing the findings of the WHO-led mission. China refused to give raw data on early Covid-19 cases to a WHO-led team probing the origins of the pandemic, Dominic Dwyer, one of the team’s investigators said last month, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began.

The WHO team all but dismissed the suggestions that the virus may have leaked from a laboratory in a press conference after their mission. But later that week the WHO director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said “all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and studies”.

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