WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has urged all countries to share all they know about the origins of the COVID-19 virus, following claims by US government agencies that a Chinese lab breach was to blame for the pandemic outbreak.
“If any country has information about the origins of the pandemic, it’s essential for that information to be shared with WHO and the international scientific community,” Ghebreyesus said on Friday, according to AFP news agency.
For the sake of the millions of people who died from Covid and those who are still suffering from it, according to Tedros, it is morally necessary to ascertain how the pandemic got started.
The head of the WHO stated that while they did not want to assign blame, they did want to understand the cause of the pandemic in order to better avoid, plan for, and respond to epidemics and pandemics in the future.
Tedros made the request while criticizing the politicization of the Covid genesis research, claiming that it was making the scientific process more difficult and making the world less secure as a result.
“WHO has not abandoned any plans to identify the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he told reporters.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the Covid-19 technical head for the health agency, said they have contacted the US mission in Geneva for more details.
“So far, however, they did not have access to the data on which the US reports were based,” Kerkhove was quoted as saying.
“It remains vital that that information is shared, to help move the scientific studies forward,” she added.
WHO’s statement came after FBI Director claimed that Covid was “most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan”
The WHO’s statement comes after FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Fox News Channel on Tuesday that the bureau felt the cause of the Covid pandemic was “most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan” after investigating the outbreak.
Wray was responding to a US report that was released earlier this week by the US Department of Energy which suggested that a Chinese lab leak was the most likely cause of the coronavirus outbreak.