{"id":6917,"date":"2023-09-17T19:41:14","date_gmt":"2023-09-17T14:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/?p=6917"},"modified":"2023-09-17T19:41:16","modified_gmt":"2023-09-17T14:41:16","slug":"who-calls-on-china-for-full-access-for-covid-investigators-ft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/news\/who-calls-on-china-for-full-access-for-covid-investigators-ft\/","title":{"rendered":"WHO calls on China for ‘full access’ for Covid investigators: FT"},"content":{"rendered":"

The head of the World Health Organization told the Financial Times he was ready to send a new mission of experts to China to investigate the origins of Covid-19.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We’re pressing China to give full access, and we are asking countries to raise it during their bilateral meetings — (to urge Beijing) to co-operate,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the FT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the WHO had already written to China asking “to give us information ” and for the organisation to send a team “if they allow us to do so”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The international community has been unable to determine with certainty the origins of the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first cases were detected at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China, suggesting two opposing theories: an escape from a laboratory in the city where such viruses were being studied or an intermediate animal that infected people at a local market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A team of specialists led by the WHO and accompanied by Chinese colleagues had investigated China in early 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a joint report, they favoured the hypothesis that the virus had been transmitted by intermediary animal from a bat to a human, possibly at a market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tedros said after that all options remained “on the table”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There has not been a team able to return to China and WHO officials have repeatedly asked for additional data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tedros has repeatedly said the WHO would not abandon its investigation and has called on Beijing for transparency in sharing data, carrying out investigations and sharing the results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The WHO lifted the highest alert level that had been in place for the pandemic earlier this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to vaccines, post-infection immunity and better treatment, the virus is now under greater control, although with the arrival of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, new variants are emerging.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The head of the World Health Organization told the Financial Times he was ready to send a new mission of experts to China to investigate the origins of Covid-19. “We’re pressing China to give full access, and we are asking countries to raise it during their bilateral meetings — (to urge Beijing) to co-operate,” Tedros […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":6918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,81,396,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-china","category-latest","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}