WHO Quietly Drops Second Phase of Probe Into Covid Origins
The next phase of the investigation was intended as a follow-up to research conducted in January 2021 by an international team of experts convened by the WHO in Wuhan, China, where the virus that causes COVID-19 was first detected. The team released a report in March outlining four possible scenarios, with the most likely pointing to the virus spreading from bats to people. But the follow-up trip to further analyze evidence has been scrapped.
There is no phase two, Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist at the WHO, told Nature. The politics across the world of this really hampered progress on understanding the origins. The Chinese ministry of foreign affairs did not respond to the journal s requests for comment.
WHO recommended a deeper probe into whether a lab accident may be to blame for releasing the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is the cause of the covid pandemic after backlash abounded from their original report, which read as if the Chinese crafted it.
That stance marks a sharp reversal of the U.N. health agency s initial assessment of the pandemic s origins, and comes after many critics accused WHO of being too quick to dismiss or underplay a lab-leak theory that put Chinese officials on the defensive.
WHO concluded last year that it was extremely unlikely COVID-19 might have spilled into humans in the city of Wuhan from a lab. Many scientists suspect the coronavirus jumped into people from bats, possibly via another animal.
There is continuing research, however, that appears to be focused on the animal-origins hypothesis.
Not a big surprise. If you’re not going to like what you might find, you can always just not look.