Coronavirus: Report on origin of virus will be released on Tuesday - WHO
The report is "extremely sensitive" to China, which has consistently claimed that it is not responsible for the spread of the coronavirus.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFDominic Dwyer, a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), sits in a car arriving to Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, Hubei province, China February 3, 2021.(photo credit: REUTERS/THOMAS PETER/FILE PHOTO)
The head of the World Health Organization said that a long-awaited report into the origins of the new coronavirus following a mission to China where the coronavirus first emerged will be released publicly on Tuesday, but that further study is required.Obtained exclusively by the Associated Press, a draft copy of the report asserts that it is most probable that the virus originally had been transmitted from bats to another animal, and eventually to humans. The AP also quoted the report as calling the theory of a lab leak "extremely unlikely." Asked to comment further on its conclusions, WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "As I have said, all hypotheses are on the table and warrant complete and further studies."German international development minister Gerd Mueller said at the same briefing that he welcomed China's cooperation with the probe, which took place in January and February.The AP noted that the release of the report is important to pay attention to for two reasons: the first is to make sure that the conditions for the birth and spread of such a lethal virus can never take shape again; the second is that the report is "extremely sensitive" to China, which has been consistently contended that it is not responsible for the spread of the coronavirus.A group of experts, sent by the WHO to Wuhan in January-February, offered at the time four hypothesized scenarios as to the origin of the virus, the second one being what was confirmed in the AP-obtained report, that it was transmitted from a bat to an intermediary species, and then on to humans.Reuters contributed to this report.
