(Reuters) – A World Health Organization team investigating the origins of COVID-19 is planning to undo an interim report on its recent mission to China amid growing tensions between Beijing and Washington over the investigation and an appeal by an international group of scientists for a new investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported at.wsj.com/388QK6F on Thursday.
In Geneva, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said in an email response: “The full report is expected in the coming weeks”.
No additional information was immediately available on the reasons for the delay in publishing the results of the WHO-led mission to the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first human cases of COVID-19 were detected in late 2019. Data on the first cases of COVID- 19 for a WHO-led team investigating the origins of the pandemic, Dominic Dwyer, said one of the team’s investigators last month, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began.
The investigation was affected by delays, concerns about access and disputes between Beijing and Washington, which accused China of hiding the extent of the initial outbreak and criticized the terms of the visit, under which Chinese experts conducted the first phase of the survey.
The team, which arrived in China in January and spent four weeks investigating the origins of the outbreak, limited itself to visits organized by its Chinese hosts and was prevented from contacting members of the community due to health restrictions. The first two weeks were spent in a hotel quarantine.
Reporting by Aishwarya Nair in Bengaluru and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Bernadette Baum