Geneva, Dec 31 (UNI) China has a moral scientific obligation to share data on the origins of COVID-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement on the fifth anniversary of the first media article about cases of respiratory infection in Wuhan.
“We continue to call on China to share data and access so we can understand the origins of COVID-19. This is a moral and scientific imperative. Without transparency, sharing, and cooperation among countries, the world cannot adequately prevent and prepare for future epidemics and pandemics,” the statement says.
In August, WHO spokesperson Maria Van Kerkhove told RIA Novosti that China was not cooperating sufficiently with the World Health Organization (WHO) on the origins of COVID-19, but the investigation was still ongoing.
On December 31, 2019, Chinese authorities informed the WHO about an outbreak of unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan in the central part of the country (Hubei Province). Moreover, the first cases were reportedly somehow connected to the local seafood market. In early January 2020, China officially announced that the outbreak of viral pneumonia of unknown origin was caused by a new type of coronavirus. And already on March 11, 2020, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that the spread of the new coronavirus was of a pandemic nature.
Following a two-year investigation, US congressmen stated that the coronavirus most likely had a laboratory origin and spread as a result of a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan.
