Facing intense international pressure and criticism, the World Health Organization abandoned plans to release a summary report of its investigation into the possible origin of the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.
Instead, the United Nations health agency is skipping the summary report and plans to release a full report in the week of March 15. WHO had previously said it would release a summary report in mid-February.
“By definition, a summary report does not contain all the details,” said Dr. Ben Embarek, a WHO expert who led the investigation, to The Wall Street Journal. “So, from there [is] so much interest in this report, just a summary would not satisfy the readers’ curiosity. “
At a news conference on Friday, WHO emergency program executive director Mike Ryan echoed the thought, saying that jumping straight to the full report will facilitate the discussion, given the huge demand for the investigation’s findings.
The limited information about the investigation’s findings that has been released so far has already generated intense criticism and increased tension between the U.S. and China.
Dangerous probe
The investigation was conducted by a team of international researchers and WHO experts between mid-January and early February in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic first spread in December 2019. The WHO team underwent quarantine from 14 days after his arrival, he then spent about 12 days doing fieldwork around the city.
They visited places like Huanan’s infamous seafood market, where many of the first COVID-19 cases were related, as well as the hospital where the first patients sought treatment. The team also took a trip to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has become the focus of growing speculation that SARS-CoV-2 has escaped from a laboratory, possibly after being detected during research on coronavirus in bats and / or purposely designed to infect humans. Although virologists around the world have noted that this explanation is unlikely – a natural overflow event is seen as the most likely source – they note that it is impossible to dismiss it without further information.
At a Wuhan press conference on February 9, the WHO team practically said it had, in fact, ruled it out. Embarek called the hypothesis of the laboratory’s origin “extremely unlikely” and suggested that there was no need to pursue the idea. Instead, Embarek supported the researchers’ earlier thinking, calling the natural overflow hypothesis the “most likely path” that SARS-CoV-2 took for humans. Chinese scientists, in turn, raised the possibility that the virus was imported into the country through frozen freight – an idea seen as not supported by data and unlikely by international researchers.
When the WHO team members returned to their countries of origin, their conclusions seemed to soften. At a press conference, the Director-General of WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, seemed to go back to Embarek’s earlier comments on the hypothesis of the laboratory’s origin. “Some questions have been raised about whether any hypotheses have been ruled out,” said Tedros. “Having spoken to some members of the team, I would like to confirm that all hypotheses remain open and need further analysis and studies. Part of this work may be outside the scope and scope of this mission. “
“Deep concerns”
Other scientists and experts criticized the investigation and the comments, saying the team did not have the necessary unrestricted access to critical sites and data to reach any conclusions. One of the team members themselves reinforced this criticism. In media interviews, WHO investigative team member Dominic Dwyer reported that Chinese authorities withheld important raw data that the team requested in the first COVID-19 cases identified in Wuhan.
US officials have also expressed skepticism about the integrity of the WHO investigation. In a statement on February 13, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said: “We have deep concerns about how the first findings of the COVID-19 investigation were communicated and questions about the process used to reach them. It is imperative that this report is independent, with conclusions from experts free from intervention or alteration by the Chinese government ”.
Likewise, in an interview on PBS this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that “China was not fully and effectively transparent at the beginning of this crisis, when it was most important, or even today, as investigations are moving forward trying to obtain to the bottom of what happened. “
In final comments at the press conference on Friday, Tedros responded to calls for transparency, saying that everything that happened during the team’s trip to Wuhan will be presented in full in the next report.