www.science.org
Science's COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation.
The World Health Organization (WHO) mission to China to probe the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic
had a bumpy start, so it's perhaps no surprise that the team's departure from China didn't go entirely smoothly either. A 9 February press conference in Wuhan to summarize the mission's findings was widely hailed within China, but criticized elsewhere.
During the press conference, WHO program manager and mission leader Peter Ben Embarek and team member Marion Koopmans praised China's cooperation during the 4-week investigation. They said it was "extremely unlikely" that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a Chinese laboratory and said the team would not investigate that hypothesis further. But they kept open the possibility that the virus arrived in Wuhan on frozen food, a route promoted aggressively by Chinese media to suggest the virus was imported from elsewhere in the world.
Some journalists and scientists called the event a double win for China and demanded more evidence for the rejection of the lab theory. And on 12 February, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus appeared to publicly push back against the team, saying, "All hypotheses are on the table" with respect to the pandemic's origins. Meanwhile, media reports have suggested WHO team members were disappointed about not getting access to certain data, for instance on Chinese patients with respiratory symptoms who may have been some of the earliest COVID-19 cases.
www.science.org
The World Health Organization (WHO) mission to China to probe the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic
had a bumpy start, so it's perhaps no surprise that the team's departure from China didn't go entirely smoothly either. A 9 February press conference in Wuhan to summarize the mission's findings was widely hailed within China, but criticized elsewhere.
During the press conference, WHO program manager and mission leader Peter Ben Embarek and team member Marion Koopmans praised China's cooperation during the 4-week investigation. They said it was "extremely unlikely" that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a Chinese laboratory and said the team would not investigate that hypothesis further. But they kept open the possibility that the virus arrived in Wuhan on frozen food, a route promoted aggressively by Chinese media to suggest the virus was imported from elsewhere in the world.
Some journalists and scientists called the event a double win for China and demanded more evidence for the rejection of the lab theory. And on 12 February, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus appeared to publicly push back against the team, saying, "All hypotheses are on the table" with respect to the pandemic's origins. Meanwhile, media reports have suggested WHO team members were disappointed about not getting access to certain data, for instance on Chinese patients with respiratory symptoms who may have been some of the earliest COVID-19 cases.
