Paris:
The search for the origins of the Covid pandemic that has killed millions and crippled economies is at a standstill even as time is operating out, scientists charged with the activity by the UN warned Wednesday.
An initial report by the World Health Organization (WHO) group based on a January mission to Wuhan, China — ground zero of the worldwide pandemic — concluded that the SARS-CoV-2 virus possibly jumped from bats to humans through an intermediate animal.
A competing hypothesis that the virus leaked from a specialised virology lab in Wuhan was deemed “extremely unlikely”.
But in a comment in the journal Nature, the scientists stated that mission was only intended as a “first step in a process that has stalled.”
“The search for the origins of SARS-CoV-2 is at a critical juncture,” they wrote.
“The window of opportunity for conducting this crucial enquiry is closing fast.”
Tracing the biological trail back to the earliest pockets of the illness becomes more challenging as proof disappears or becomes corrupted.
The statement comes much less than two weeks immediately after the WHO, in a bid to revive the probe, urged China to hand more than data on the earliest COVID-19 situations.
This ought to consist of Covid information for 174 infections identified in December 2019 that China failed to share throughout the initial investigation, the WHO professionals stated.
WHO investigators stated “it was agreed” at the time that a second phase of investigation would fill in this gap.
But China pushed back against the WHO request earlier this month, saying the January investigation ought to suffice and that calls for additional information had been motivated by politics, not science.
‘Diminishing Returns’
Beijing has specially bridled at the suggestion that the virus may have escaped from the Wuhan virology lab.
On Tuesday, US intelligence agencies presented President Joe Biden with a report hunting at each the animal transmission and “lab-leak” hypotheses. The findings had been described as inconclusive.
In its comment, the WHO group notes that existing information does not help the lab-leak situation.
None of six priorities for additional investigation alluded to this possibility.
Rather, the scientists emphasised the have to have to trace the earliest situations of Covid by way of illness reporting and antibody surveys, inside and outdoors China.
They also referred to as for additional investigation of wildlife farms and wild bats.
“As SARS-CoV-2 antibodies wane, so collecting further samples and testing people who might have been exposed before December 2019 will yield diminishing returns,” they stated.
It added that several of the wildlife farms of interest for study have been closed and their livestock killed.
(This story has not been edited by TheSpuzz employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)