WHO Covid team barred from entering China to study coronavirus origins

WHO Covid team barred from entering China to study coronavirus origins

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WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that two scientists from the United Nations team had already left their home countries for Wuhan when they were informed that Chinese authorities had not approved the necessary permits to enter the country.

The arrangements were previously agreed with China.

“I am very disappointed by this news,” Tedros told a news conference in Geneva on Tuesday. “I have been in contact with senior Chinese officials and once again made it clear that the mission is a priority for WHO and the international team.”

Tedros said that WHO is “eager to start the mission as soon as possible” and that he has received assurances that Beijing is speeding up the internal procedure for “the fastest possible deployment.”

Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergency program, said there was a visa problem and a staff member had already returned home. The other was waiting in transit in a third country.

WHO officials have long negotiated with Beijing to allow a team of global scientists to access key locations to investigate the origin of the virus – first detected in Wuhan in December 2019 – and its likely leap from an unidentified host species for humans.

In May, WHO agreed to conduct a survey on the global response to the pandemic, after more than 100 countries signed a resolution calling for an independent investigation.
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Ryan said the team expects it to be “just a logistical and bureaucratic issue” that can be resolved in “good faith in the next few hours and start distributing the team as quickly as possible”.

The United States and Australia have criticized the way China deals with the early stages of the pandemic, accusing Beijing of minimizing its severity and preventing an effective response until too late.

United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly blamed China for the global pandemic and announced that the United States would end its relationship with WHO, saying that China had not adequately reported the information it had about the coronavirus and pressured WHO to ” deceive the world “.
The United States requires transparency in WHO’s operations in China. In November, Garrett Grigsby of the United States Department of Health and Human Services told the WHO assembly that the terms of the investigation into China “have not been negotiated transparently” and “the investigation itself appears to be inconsistent” with his mandate .
A collection of confidential documents obtained by CNN last year from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Hubei province – where the virus was first detected in 2019 – showed how the Chinese authorities gave the world more optimistic data than they had access internally, initially underreporting the number of cases during the early stages of the outbreak.
The Chinese government has repeatedly rejected accusations by the United States and other Western governments that it has deliberately withheld information related to the virus, arguing that it has been straightforward since the outbreak began.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Monday that the country would welcome the WHO team, according to Reuters.

CNN contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China to comment on Tedros’ statements.

As countries around the world struggle with new outbreaks and outbreaks of infection, China appears to be recovering. Last month, the country recorded positive economic growth for the second consecutive quarter.
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Foreign Minister Wang Yi praised China’s anti-pandemic efforts at home and abroad, saying the country “launched a global emergency humanitarian campaign” and “helped build consensus on a global response to Covid-19” .

As the WHO team prepared to embark, Chinese officials and state media questioned the origins of the virus, saying “more and more research suggests that the pandemic was probably caused by separate outbreaks around the world,” according to Wang.
On Monday, news circulated on Chinese social media that the virus was detected in automotive parts packaging in several cities, including foreign brands.

For months, China tested and disinfected frozen products imported from abroad, fearing that the virus could re-enter the country in this way, although experts remain skeptical about it as a potential source of infection.

The WHO says it is “highly unlikely that people will be able to contract Covid-19 from food or food packaging”, and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say the risk “is considered very low”. Both insist that there is no evidence of such transmission, and countries have even threatened to file a case against China at the World Trade Organization over restrictions on imports.

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