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The US calls for "an independent investigation" into the origin of the coronavirus

2021-05-26T20:41:41.278Z


The American Secretary of Health, Xavier Becerra, calls for a study based on science and the independence of the experts


With more than three million deaths on the planet due to the coronavirus pandemic, the origin of the outbreak remains unknown.

Today no hypotheses are discarded, and the focus is opened to cover both the theory of an accidental escape from a laboratory and that of a natural jump from animals.

The United States is on that path, which does not commit to any of the explanations given so far and this Tuesday it has requested an "independent" and "transparent" study of the origin of the coronavirus that causes covid-19.

During a video intervention at the annual assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Secretary of Health, Xavier Becerra, declared this Tuesday through videoconference that it was necessary to better understand the pandemic "in order to be able to better respond to future threats ”.

Becerra has insisted that any study carried out in order to know how, when and what happened must be "based on science and on the independence of the experts."

"Phase 2 of the study on the origins of covid should be launched with terms of reference that are transparent, science-based, and give international experts the independence to fully assess the source of the virus and the early days of the outbreak." , said Becerra.

More information

  • WHO director calls for more studies on the possibility of the coronavirus escaping from a laboratory in Wuhan

"We do not have enough information to draw conclusions about the origin" of the coronavirus, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Monday. “We need new data. We need an independent investigation. And that's exactly what we've been asking for, ”he insisted. The presidential spokeswoman's response to the press came after it was learned that North American intelligence agencies had reports that revealed that researchers from the Chinese laboratory in Wuhan had been seriously ill a month before Beijing reported the first case of coronavirus, although the sources of The Administration quoted by Reuters agency asked for caution when concluding that the origin of the pandemic was in a laboratory leak.

Last Monday,

The Wall Street Journal

reported that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November 2019 and had symptoms similar to those of COVID-19 shortly before the pandemic broke out, and needed medical attention. His symptoms, according to this report that was written in the last days of the Donald Trump Administration and to which the

Journal

has had access

, were consistent with both covid-19 and common seasonal diseases. However, China had informed the WHO that the first patient with symptoms similar to COVID-19 was registered in Wuhan on December 8, 2019.

The New York newspaper highlights that the Wuhan Institute has not shared raw data, safety records and laboratory records on its extensive work with coronavirus in bats, an animal that has been considered the most likely source of the origin of the virus.

While it is true that the report reinforces the belief that the virus probably originated naturally, from contact between animals and humans, it does not exclude the possibility that it was the result of an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute, where it was being carried. carried out an investigation on coronavirus in bats.

A market in Wuhan on January 19.HECTOR RETAMAL / AFP

China has always denied that the virus escaped from one of its laboratories. But Beijing's lack of transparency has led some leading scientists to believe that such a possibility may have been rejected too early. Within the questioned management that the Trump Administration made of the pandemic, there was a first voice within the Republican Party that, if the theory that the virus left the Wuhan laboratory is proven, will go down in the history books as the first politician in take it into account. Sen. Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, pointed from the beginning to the place where the Wuhan Institute was located to seek answers to the crisis.

On December 30, 2019, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued an "urgent notice" to the higher health institutions saying that cases of pneumonia, of which the origin was unknown, had occurred in the city in the Huanan market (in Wuhan), considered at the beginning of the pandemic as ground zero for the coronavirus.

Since then, the attempt to explain the origin of the pandemic has fluctuated between what were considered conspiracy theories fed by Trump and his followers regarding an intentional leak of a virus stored in the Wuhan laboratory and scientific hypotheses based on the existence of a progenitor of the virus in bats that, through a chain of infections to other species, eventually ended up in infected animals that are sold in different markets in Wuhan.

WHO research

Already with Joe Biden in the White House, a WHO mission with China concluded on February 9 that the hypothesis of the laboratory accident was “extremely unlikely”, while natural transmission from an animal reservoir was “probable or very probable. ”.

And yet, two days later, on February 11, the WHO director general, the Ethiopian Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, refused to rule out the possibility that there had been a leak in the Chinese laboratory and called for a more exhaustive investigation into that hypothesis. , since the Wuhan Institute of Virology was working with coronavirus and is just over 10 kilometers from the considered ground zero of the pandemic, the now famous Huanan market.

On February 19, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan issued a statement on the WHO report in which he declared that the White House has "serious concerns about the way in which the first investigations of the origin were carried out. of the covid-19. "It is imperative that this report be independent, with experts able to investigate freely without Chinese intervention or manipulation," the adviser said. "To understand this pandemic and be prepared for the next one, China must make accessible all the information it has available since the first days of the virus outbreak," the Biden Administration's post ended.

Source: elparis

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