Washington, United States:
The World Health Organization has scrapped plans for a group that visited Wuhan, China to probe the origins of the coronavirus pandemic to problem an interim report, The Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday.
Wuhan is the city exactly where the pandemic is believed to have originated in late 2019.
The WHO group returned not too long ago from its go to there saying it had no clear acquiring on the genesis of the virus, amid tensions among the US and China on what triggered the as soon as-in-a century worldwide well being crisis.
The United States responded by saying it had “deep concerns” about what the group discovered and it pressed China for more information and facts.
WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had mentioned February 12 that a preliminary report with a summary of the team’s findings would be issued quickly thereafter, and a complete report in a matter of weeks.
But now the strategy is to scrap the interim report, the Journal mentioned, quoting Peter Ben Embarek, the scientist who led the group.
Instead, the group will publish the complete and final report, with a summary of its findings, the newspaper mentioned, quoting a WHO spokesman.
This broader report “will be published in coming weeks and will include key findings,” it quoted this spokesman as saying.
“By definition a summary report does not have all the details,” Ben Embarek was quoted as saying.
“So since there (is) so much interest in this report, a summary only would not satisfy the curiosity of the readers,” he added.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price known as on China Thursday to share what it knows from the earliest days of the pandemic.
“It is about learning and doing, being positioned to do everything we can to protect ourselves, the American people, and the international community against pandemic threats going forward,” Price told a briefing.
“That’s why we need this understanding. That’s why we need this transparency from the Chinese government,” he mentioned.
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