Three years after its debut, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic are attracting renewed attention. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday that a lab accident in Wuhan, China, was ” very probably “ at the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, two days after a similar hypothesis put forward by the US Department of Energy.
The WHO urged, on Friday March 3, all countries, in particular the United States, to share their information on the question. “If a country has information on the origins of the pandemic, it is essential that this information is shared with the WHO and the international scientific community”, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at his regular press conference. It’s not about “identify culprits”he specified, but “advancing our understanding of how this pandemic began”.
Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the Covid-19 response at the WHO, told reporters that the agency had asked Americans to share information from the Department of Energy, but also from other agencies. “At this time, we do not have access to these reports or to the data that made it possible to draw up these reports”she admitted.
The scientific community believes that it is crucial to know the origins of this scourge in order to be able to fight it better or even avoid a future pandemic. But it is also divided between the proponents of the hypothesis of transmission by intermediate animal and those who defend the thesis of the flight from a laboratory in Wuhan.
The Dr Tedros sees a “scientific imperative” but also « moral » vis-à-vis the millions of victims and their families. He lamented “the politicization continues” of this quest for the origins of the worst pandemic in a century, which has transformed “what should be a purely scientific process into a geopolitical game”.
Divided U.S. Services
New intelligence elements would have tilted the analysis of the American Department of Energy on the side of the hypothesis of the leak, according to anonymous sources quoted by the Wall Street Journalthe New York Times et CNN.
The US intelligence world is now even more divided, with some agencies believing that Covid-19 arose through natural transmission. The FBI director also accused China of trying to block the United States’ investigation into the causes of the Covid-19 pandemic. Beijing vigorously disputes these claims.
The pandemic has claimed more than 7 million lives since the end of 2019, a balance sheet that is undoubtedly far below reality.
A team of specialists under the leadership of the WHO and accompanied by Chinese colleagues had investigated in China at the beginning of 2021 to try to unravel the mystery of the origins in Wuhan, on the places where the pandemic seems to have started.
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In a joint report, they had favored the hypothesis of the transmission to humans of the highly contagious virus by an animal which played the intermediary between the bat and the man, perhaps in a market in the city. Chinese. No team was able to return to China and WHO officials repeatedly requested additional data, which until then had always been denied.
Beijing called for transparency
The Dr Tedros repeated on Friday that the WHO does not intend to abandon the search and called Beijing again “to be transparent in the sharing of data, to carry out the necessary investigations and to share the results”. He reaffirmed that he had written to many senior Chinese leaders, and spoken with them on multiple occasions, “just a few weeks ago”. For now, he concluded, “all assumptions (…) stay on the table”.
He also stressed that States should soon begin negotiations at the WHO on a draft global agreement on pandemics, aimed at settling the issue of information sharing and inequalities in access to vaccines observed between countries. rich and developing countries in the face of Covid-19. The Dr Tedros said he hoped negotiations could be concluded by May 2024 and called on countries “to learn the lessons of this pandemic” so as not to reproduce the errors.