WHO chief toughens tone on China with lab probe call

The WHO's chief, long accused of complacency towards China, hardened his tone Tuesday, urging further investigation into a theory Covid-19 sprang from a laboratory leak. The director-general of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also rebuked Beijing for sitting on key data. The theory that the new coronavirus may have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city where it was first detected in humans in December 2019, was a US favourite under former president Donald Trump. China has always flatly rejected the hypothesis.

Their long-delayed report, written alongside the team's Chinese counterparts and published Tuesday, ranked four hypotheses in order of probability. They said the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 disease most probably jumped from bats to humans via an intermediary animal, judging a lab leak to be an "extremely unlikely" source.  Tedros said  the probe into Wuhan's virology labs had not gone far enough, adding that he was prepared to launch a fresh investigation."I do not believe that this assessment was extensive enough," he told the UN health agency's 194 member states, in a briefing on the Covid origins report. "Further data and studies will be needed to reach more robust conclusions," he said.

Tedros also urged China to be more forthcoming with data -- a call echoed by several countries led by the United States, Britain and Japan. Tedros said the Wuhan mission found that the first detected case had symptom onset on December 8, 2019 -- but to understand the earliest cases, scientists would benefit from full access to data stretching back to at least September 2019. The team "expressed the difficulties they encountered in accessing raw data. I expect future collaborative studies to include more timely and comprehensive data sharing," said Tedros.