China stymies the Wuhan probe

The World Health Organisation’s Beijing-friendly director-general, Tedros Ghebreyesus, has good reason to be “very disappointed” by the obstacles put up by China that are preventing an international scientific team going to Wuhan to investigate the origins of the COVID -19 pandemic. The brazen obstruction by the Chinese Communist Party regime is outrageous. It is an affront to the global community after virtually all 194 WHO countries at the World Health Assembly last May — including China itself, albeit reluctantly — supported the call for a full, independent investigation first made by Scott Morrison. China’s action is CCP malfeasance and arrogance at its worst, in the face of almost two million deaths, intense suffering and economic devastation wrought by the virus. It raises the question: what is there to hide?

After months of trying to overcome what it termed “a barrage of (Chinese) logistic demands and rules”, the 10-member WHO team of eminent virologists finally was due to deploy to Wuhan on Tuesday. Instead, with scientists on their way to China, Dr Tedros, in a rare rebuke to Beijing, had to announce that “Chinese officials have not finalised the necessary permission for the team’s arrival” so it could not proceed. “I’m very disappointed,” he said, adding he had been “assured China is speeding up the internal procedures for the earliest possible deployment”.

Dr Tedros’s sidekick, WHO emergencies program director Michael Ryan, claimed the problem was a lack of visa clearances for the team — eight months after the WHA voted for speedy action. “We trust and hope that this is just a logistic and bureaucratic issue that can be resolved very quickly,” he said. WHO officials’ willingness to accept such a lame explanation defies credulity. But it fits their pattern of lavishing praise on Beijing that has been evident from the start of the pandemic. After Dr Tedros and Dr Ryan met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on January 28 last year, Dr Tedros gushed: “The speed with which China detected the outbreak, isolated the virus, sequenced the genome and shared it with the WHO and the world are very impressive and beyond words. China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response. It’s not an exaggeration.” Really?

That, incredibly, was said after China covered up the virus for 12 days following its formal notification to the WHO of the Wuhan outbreak on December 31, 2019. Virologists believe that delay seriously impaired the world’s response. Dr Tedros and Dr Ryan will do further damage to what remains of the WHO’s standing if they persist in being indulgent towards China.

The WHA left no doubt the entire global community, and not only Australia, wants a full investigation into the pandemic. China’s feral reaction to the Prime Minister’s sensible suggestion was, and continues to be, excessive and irrational. Not investigating the origins of the outbreak is also detrimental to China’s interests if it wants to prevent future pandemics. After Dr Tedros’s January 28 meeting with Mr Xi last year, a WHO statement said: “The two sides agreed that WHO will send international experts to visit China as soon as possible to work with Chinese counterparts on increasing understanding of the outbreak to guide global response efforts.” There should have been no delay in getting the mission started.

The CCP is determined to persevere in its false narrative that China bears no responsibility for the pandemic. The need for the truth to emerge is compelling. In a Zoom call to politicians around the world, US deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger claimed intelligence evidence suggested coronavirus was leaked from a Chinese biological weapons research laboratory 17km from the Wuhan “wet market”. Dr Tedros and the international community must insist on a rigorous investigation, without obstructions. The WHO is letting the world down in its supine response to Beijing’s behaviour, which has the hallmarks of a rogue state.