TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Finding COVID origins a moral imperative: WHO chief
A United States agency was reported by The Wall Street Journal to have assessed that the pandemic had likely been caused by an unintended Chinese laboratory leak, raising pressure on the WHO to come up with answers.
Change Size
D
iscovering the origins of COVID-19 was a moral imperative and all hypotheses must be explored, the head of the World Health Organization said, in the clearest indication yet that the United Nations body remains committed to finding how the virus arose.
A United States agency was reported by The Wall Street Journal to have assessed that the pandemic had likely been caused by an unintended Chinese laboratory leak, raising pressure on the WHO to come up with answers. Beijing denies the assessment, which could soon become public after the US House of Representatives voted this week to declassify it.
“Understanding #COVID19’s origins and exploring all hypotheses remains: A scientific imperative, to help us prevent future outbreaks [and] a moral imperative, for the sake of the millions of people who died and those who live with #LongCOVID,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Twitter late on Saturday.
He was writing to mark three years since the WHO first used the word “pandemic” to describe the global outbreak of COVID-19.
Activists, politicians and academics said in an open letter this weekend that the focus of the anniversary should be on preventing a repeat of the unequal COVID-19 vaccine rollout, saying this led to at least 1.3 million preventable deaths.
In 2021, a WHO-led team spent weeks in and around Wuhan, China, where the first human cases were reported, and said in a joint report that the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal, but further research was needed.
China has said no more visits are needed.
Since then, the WHO has set up a scientific advisory group on dangerous pathogens, but it has not yet reached any conclusions on how the pandemic began, saying key pieces of data are missing.
