COVID-19 WHO investigation slammed for being ‘complete whitewash’
WHO’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19 in Wuhan has been slammed as a “whitewash”, after seeming to let China off the hook.
The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19 has been slammed as a “whitewash”, after experts concluded it is “extremely unlikely” the virus escaped from a lab or originated at Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Market.
In a lengthy joint press conference, Dr Peter Ben Embarek said the team’s findings suggest “that the laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain introduction of the virus into the human population”.
The chair of the investigation team and WHO’s food safety and animal disease specialist, Dr Embarek also said that “cold chain” transmission through the transport of frozen goods was possible and warranted further investigation.
It’s a theory that China itself posited in retaliation to former US president Donald Trump’s baseless accusations early last year that the nation had leaked coronavirus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But WHO’s possible validation of it has fuelled allegations of the organisation’s “China-centric” bias, with politicians in Australia, America and the UK jumping to criticise the investigation after its conclusion.
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Speaking on Today this morning, Nationals Senator Matt Canavan said China acted like it had “something to hide”, adding he was not surprised that it was hard to find the virus’ origins a year after the pandemic began.
“We needed this inquiry to start pretty much straight away if there was any hope of finding conclusions and it hasn’t,” he said.
“Through this whole process, China’s acted like it had something to hide and it has frustrated the inquiry, dragged it out.”
Mr Canavan said that while the world would benefit from knowing where COVID-19 came from so it could be prevented, “we will probably never know because China has not been fully transparent with the world”.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt shared similar views on Sky News, saying it was “not surprising that there are no surprises” in the WHO report.
“The overwhelming likelihood is that you have an animal-based source, and that the virus is likely to arise somewhere in the vicinity of the first human cases,” Mr Hunt said.
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Over in the US, where the Trump administration repeatedly spruiked false claims about the virus, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo again alleged that “significant evidence” remained to suggest COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab.
“I must say the reason we left the World Health Organisation was because we came to believe that it was corrupt,” he told Fox News’ America’s Newsroom.
“It had been politicised. It was bending a knee to General Secretary Xi Jinping in China. I hope that’s not the case here with what they’ve announced today.”
Mr Pompeo added he “hoped” the team of WHO scientists “got to see all the data, all the science, into the lab, talk to all the doctors, interview them in private, in places where they could actually tell the truth about what took place”.
“Not under the supervision of a Communist Party person sitting in the back of the room making sure that they toed the Communist Party line,” he sad.
“I look forward to seeing their results. I continue to know that there was significant evidence that this may well have come from that laboratory.”
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British Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood added the investigation “is a complete whitewash”.
“Given the global economic devastation and death toll this pandemic has caused, never again should a country responsible for an outbreak be allowed to hinder an international investigation for a full 12 months,” he toldThe Sun.
One WHO adviser, Jamie Metzl, told the publication that “rejecting the lab leak hypothesis out of hand seems a wrong move by the WHO investigation team”.
“To make this assertion credibly, they would have needed full and unrestricted access to all records, samples and key personnel from the WIV and other labs, which they clearly did not have,” he said.
“We still need an unrestricted international forensic investigation looking at all possible hypotheses.”
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