[ad_1]
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has pressured Beijing to learn more about the origins of COVID-19.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has met with the Chinese prime minister to hold talks on COVID-19, including an ongoing investigation into the origins of the pandemic.
The meeting between Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Li Keqiang on Saturday was a matter of the origin of the coronavirus that strained relations between China and the West.
The WHO Director-General, who was visiting Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics, posted a photo of the couple sitting in a Twitter meeting room with officials. Ghebreyesus has done it before Press China be closer to data and information related to the origin of the virus.
“I am pleased to meet with Prime Minister Li Keqiang,” Tedros wrote on Saturday. “We have discussed COVID-19 and the need to make an aggressive effort at VaccinEquity this year to vaccinate 70 percent of all populations,” he said, referring to the WHO’s campaign for fair access to vaccines around the world.
“We also discussed the need for stronger collaboration on the origin of the Covid-19 virus, rooted in science and evidence,” he added.
The virus remains one of the main mysteries of where, when and how COVID-19 originated, killing more than six million people worldwide. The United States and other countries have criticized China for delaying the sharing of information when the virus was launched in 2019.
In December, the WHO said Beijing had not yet released any data that could help determine its origin, and called for a second phase of an investigation.
“Laboratory leak cannot be ruled out”
Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust, who left the UK government in November as an adviser to the government, said earlier this week that the “overwhelming majority” of evidence indicated natural origin, although the leak from the lab could not be ruled out.
Without international cooperation, it may be impossible to find out more and determine whether other animal viruses may pose a risk to humanity.
Moe set last year the Scientific Advisory Group on the Origins of New Pathogens (SAGO) and China called for the provision of raw data to help anyone. new research. China refused, citing patient privacy rules.
China has consistently denied that the virus escaped from a specialized laboratory in Wuhan City, where COVID-19 was first identified in late 2019.
A joint study published by China and the WHO last year dismissed the theory that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory, saying that the most likely hypothesis was that humans were naturally infected, probably through wildlife trade.
Last November, China said a U.S. intelligence report had been declassified, saying it was credible that there was no scientific pandemic in a laboratory and no credibility.
[ad_2]
Source link
