WHO whitewash leaves the world in darkness on Covid

It would be hard to view the report by World Health Organisation investigators into the origins of COVID-19 as anything other than an outrageous whitewash that has found exactly what Beijing has been trying to get the world to believe about the start of the pandemic. The report’s barefaced conclusion that it is “extremely unlikely” the virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, just because Chinese scientists say so, beggars belief. But it is no surprise given the cosy relationship between China and the WHO.

Peter Ben Embarek, the Danish food safety expert leading the WHO team, said the group was fully satisfied with answers about the institute’s safety. Conveniently for China, the team did not recommend further investigation into possible links to the laboratory. “They (the institute’s scientists) are the best ones to dismiss the claims and provide answers to all questions,” Dr Embarek said.

But as Stanford University microbiologist David Relman pointed out: “If the only information you’re allowing to be weighed is provided by the very people who have everything to lose by revealing such evidence, that just doesn’t come close to passing the sniff test.” He is right, especially in light of WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s lavish praise of China in a meeting with President Xi Jinping at the start of the crisis in January last year. After a WHO team travelled to China the following month and also praised its response to the pandemic, it was clear that the WHO, under Dr Tedros, was in China’s pocket.

One of the most bizarre features of the report was the WHO team’s decision to leave open the possibility that the virus might have been transmitted to humans through frozen food. That kooky theory was pedalled by the Chinese Communist Party, which claimed the virus could not possibly have originated in China but was most likely brought in from elsewhere through frozen animal products. At Tuesday’s presentation of the investigators’ report following their 12-day visit to Wuhan, Liang Wannian, representing China, claimed the virus was present elsewhere before it was found in Wuhan in December 2019. “Studies from different countries suggest that (the virus) was circulating preceding the initial detection of cases by several weeks,” he said. Dr Liang insisted that no laboratory in Wuhan had done work with the SARS-CoV-2 strain, as the novel coronavirus is officially known, but on the virus’s distant relatives. He said the likelihood was that it jumped across species in nature through intermediary hosts such as pangolins, cats or minks. Dr Embarek agreed it was “most likely” that the virus evolved in nature and spread to humans through such intermediary hosts.

But the overall conclusion of the WHO investigators was that they had failed to identify the original source of the pandemic and were no closer to solving the mystery of its origins. That could hardly be more disappointing for a world devastated by a virus that has had 107 million known cases, causing 2.3 million deaths.

The report does demonstrate, however, the absurdity of the CCP’s vehement over-reaction to Scott Morrison’s prudent call in April last year for a full investigation into the provenance of the pandemic. As the Prime Minister said at the time, it was in the interests of the entire world that a full investigation be started without delay. Despite Mr Xi’s hostility, the entire world, including even China, albeit reluctantly, eventually agreed with Mr Morrison at the World Health Assembly in May. But because of deliberate Chinese obstruction, it took until last month to get the team into Wuhan. The disappointing report reflects poorly on the WHO’s willingness to get to the bottom of the pandemic. But it leaves no doubt about the importance of getting to the bottom of what spawned COVID-19.

Given the way China, at the start of the outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019, did its best to scrub all evidence of the pandemic’s genesis, it was never going to be easy for any investigative team to establish the truth. Last Sunday was the first anniversary of the death of courageous Wuhan ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, who tried to warn colleagues about the virus. Chinese authorities treated him brutally, and his fate sums up all that has been shameful about Beijing’s self-serving response to the crisis.

Regardless of China’s determination not to open up, the WHO team’s inadequate effort must not be the end of attempts to establish the truth, which is vital to help avoid future pandemics. Having failed to get any real answers, the world must not give up on hopes for a more rigorous investigation.