Time.news – World Health Organization experts sent to Wuhan, China in January to investigate the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic will not publish the expected preliminary report on their findings: the Wall Street Journal writes.
“A simple summary would not satisfy the curiosity of readers,” the head of the research group, Peter Ben Embarek, explained to the authoritative financial newspaper. But a wider relationship “it will be published in the coming weeks and will contain important discoveries“.
The decision comes in a context of growing tensions between the US and China over the conditions of access offered by the Beijing government to scientists on the ground. On February 12, the WHO Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had announced that the scientists would quickly publish the preliminary report summarizing the research conducted in a month of inspections in China.
But on Thursday in an open letter, the group of scientists called for a new international investigation: the researchers say the mission in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the first known cases were found, did not have sufficient access to adequately investigate the possible origins. of the new coronavirus, let alone on the fact that the deadly virus may have come out of a laboratory.
The appeal from WHO mission scientists comes as the United States, which recently backtracked on its decision to leave the agency, is lobbying for greater transparency.
And they said they are waiting to review the report and urging China to publish all important data, including those on the first confirmed cases in December 2019 and perhaps the possible previous infections.
Beijing, meanwhile, is pressing for WHO missions to be carried out in other countries, perhaps in the United States, to investigate whether the virus may have originated outside China and spread to Wuhan via food packaging. frozen.
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