UNITED NATIONS: The WHO has criticised China for withholding data related to samples taken at a market in Wuhan in 2020 that could have provided vital information about the Covid-19 pandemic’s origins, calling on Beijing to be transparent and to share results of investigations it had conducted.
The Huanan market in central China’s Wuhan city was the epicentre of the pandemic. From its origin there, the SARS-CoV-2 virus rapidly spread to other locations in Wuhan in late 2019 and then to the rest of the world.
“Every piece of data related to studying the origins of Covid-19 needs to be shared with the international community immediately. These data could have – and should have – been shared three years ago,” World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva.
“We continue to call on China to be transparent in sharing data and to conduct the necessary investigations and share the results. Understanding how the pandemic began remains both a moral and scientific imperative,” he said. Ghebreyesus said that last Sunday, the global health agency was made aware of data published on the GISAID database in late January, and taken down again recently.
“The data, from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, relates to samples taken at the Huanan market in Wuhan, in 2020. While the data was online, scientists from a number of countries downloaded the data and analysed it. We contacted the Chinese CDC and urged them to share it with the WHO and the international scientific community,” Ghebreyesus said.
“We asked researchers from the Chinese CDC and the international group of scientists to present their analyses of the data to SAGO. These data do not provide a definitive answer to the question of how the pandemic began, but every piece of data is important in moving closer to that answer,” he said.
In a report, the New York Times mentioned international team of experts claiming they had “found genetic data from a market in Wuhan, China, linking the coronavirus with raccoon dogs for sale there.” The NYT report said the genetic data was drawn from swabs taken from in and around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market starting in January 2020, “shortly after the Chinese authorities had shut down the market because of suspicions that it was linked to the outbreak of a new virus.”
The new evidence comes weeks after a new intelligence assessment by the US Department of Energy pointed out that an “accidental laboratory leak” in China most likely caused the pandemic.
“But the genetic data from the market offers some of the most tangible evidence yet of how the virus could have spilled into people from wild animals outside a lab. It also suggests that Chinese scientists have given an incomplete account of evidence that could fill in details about how the virus was spreading at the Huanan market,” the NYT report added.