China Blocks WHO Investigation

China blocks WHO investigation team probing coronavirus origins from entering the country

Newstarget

China has blocked a team of scientists investigating the Wuhan coronavirus’s origins from entering the country. According to Chinese officials, the visas of the World Health Organization (WHO) team had not yet been approved. The WHO has been trying to send a team consisting of global health experts from different countries for some months now.

WHO Health Emergencies Program Executive Director Dr. Mike Ryan said the WHO team had been working very closely with Chinese colleagues to make the trip possible. “We were all operating on the understanding that the team will begin deployment [on Jan. 5.] We did not want to put people in the air unnecessarily if there wasn’t a guarantee of their arrival in China being successful,” he explained.

Two team members coming from a long distance had already begun their trip – until it had become clear that Chinese authorities did not approve their visas. One of the two experts had gone back, while the other was still in a third country in transit. The team hoped it was “just a logical and bureaucratic issue that can be resolved very quickly.”

The mission aimed to visit the eastern Chinese city of Wuhan to investigate the earliest case of COVID-19. The WHO had been talking to Chinese officials since July 2020 to facilitate the team’s probe in China. A number of scientists have been looking at how the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen jumped from animals to humans. However, the WHO mission will not look into the claim that the virus originated from a laboratory.

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