WHO COVID report: ‘China refused to hand over raw data’

China refused to give investigators data on 174 COVID cases from the early phase of the pandemic, casting doubt on the WHO virus origins report.

Damning new information about the level of access provided – or not provided – by the Chinese government to WHO investigators has cast further doubt on the health body’s early report into the origins of COVID-19, and is fuelling potential “conspiracy theories” about the virus that the government in Beijing has sought to squelch.

According to reports from members of the World Health Organisation’s team, which last week completed a tightly controlled investigation in and around the disease’s epicentre in Wuhan, Chinese officials broke with protocol and refused to give investigators data on 174 COVID-19 cases from the early phase of the pandemic.

One of the scientists, Australian microbiologist Dominic Dwyer, told The Wall Street Journal, “They showed us a couple of examples, but that’s not the same as doing all of them, which is standard epidemiological investigation.”

WHO team members pose for a picture after the wrapping up an investigation into the origins of COVID-19. Picture: Hector Retamal

“So then, you know, the interpretation of that data becomes more limited from our point of view, although the other side might see it as being quite good,” he said.

China’s unwillingness to share raw data, say experts, means the job of figuring out precisely where COVID-19 originated, including whether it could have escaped accidentally during “gain-of-function” experiments at the controversial Wuhan Institute of Virology, becomes that much harder.

“Key to discovering the origins of COVID-19 is to trace back the earliest cases to Case Zero,” Flinders University epidemiologist and vaccine researcher Nikolai Petrovsky said.

Professor Nikolai Petrovsky. Picture Matt Turner.

“The mystery is why would China withhold such vital information from the committee.

Could Case Zero or many of the original earliest cases be workers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) or someone closely related, as has previously been speculated?”

“Similarly why does the WIV continue to refuse to share sequences of the other 8 SARS-like coronaviruses they are known to have?”, Prof Petrovsky asked.

“Sometimes the data you cannot obtain, says more than the data you can. Withholding such important information will only fuel additional conspiracy theories about what is being covered up,” he said.

A spokesman for federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said the government was waiting for the WHO’s final report before passing judgment.

“Australia called for a transparent, scientific review into the zoonotic source of COVID-19, including through a resolution which was adopted at the World Health Assembly last May, with record international backing,” the spokesman said.

“This inquiry and ongoing work is vital as we all want to learn how this pandemic started and spread, so we can learn lessons and prevent an outbreak such as this from occurring again.

“These are very complex and detailed studies which are yet to be completed, and we appreciate the efforts of the scientific experts leading this work in difficult circumstances,” he added.