The World Health Organization (WHO) has called on Beijing to share data on the origins of the coronavirus, five years after the virus that has swept the world was first detected in Wuhan, China.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe continue to call on China to share data and access so that we can understand the origins of COVID-19. This is a moral and scientific imperative,\u201d the organization stated.<\/p>\n
Without \u201ctransparency, sharing, and cooperation\u201d between countries, the world will not be able to \u201cadequately prevent and prepare for\u201d future outbreaks and pandemics, the WHO emphasized.<\/p>\n
Most scientists believe the virus was transmitted from animals to humans. In 2021, a WHO-led team traveled to Wuhan and concluded that the virus was probably transmitted from bats to humans via another animal. However, they added that more research was needed.<\/p>\n
Last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated that his agency assessed a \u201chighly likely potential laboratory event\u201d in Wuhan led to the pandemic, supporting the controversial \u201claboratory leak\u201d theory. However, U.S. intelligence found no direct evidence to support this claim, and China dismissed it as having \u201cno credibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
The origin of the virus has also become a politically contentious issue in the U.S. Earlier this month, a Republican-led congressional subcommittee concluded after a two-year investigation that the virus originated in a laboratory in China. In response, the Democrats on the commission published their own report, arguing that the investigation \u201cfailed to find the origin of the virus or improve understanding of how the novel coronavirus emerged.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beijing responded to the WHO\u2019s comments on Tuesday, stating that it had shared information about COVID-19 \u201cwithout hiding it at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOn COVID-19 traceability, China has shared the most data and research results and made the largest contribution to global traceability research,\u201d said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning.<\/p>\n
\u201cWHO\u2019s international experts have repeatedly stated that during their visit to China, they went to all the places they wanted to go and met all the people they wanted to see,\u201d Mao added.<\/p>\n
In 2023, genetic data collected from a live food market in Wuhan was uploaded by Chinese scientists to an international database, linking COVID-19 to raccoon dogs. A team of international researchers identified these animals as the \u201cmost likely carriers\u201d of the disease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The World Health Organization (WHO) has called on Beijing to share data on the origins of the coronavirus, five years after the virus that has swept the world was first detected in Wuhan, China. \u201cWe continue to call on China to share data and access so that we can understand the origins of COVID-19. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7057,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[567,529,4529,2300,4532,4530,4527,4535,4533,4531,4534,4526,4528],"class_list":["post-7056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","tag-beijing","tag-china","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-data-sharing","tag-laboratory-leak","tag-origin","tag-outbreak","tag-pandemic","tag-traceability","tag-virus-origin","tag-who","tag-wuhan"],"yoast_head":"\n