Shanghai:
Despite a higher-profile go to to China by a group of international specialists in January, the planet is no closer to understanding the origins of COVID-19, according to one of the authors of an open letter calling for a new investigation into the pandemic.
“At this point we are no further advanced than we were a year ago,” stated Nikolai Petrovsky, an specialist in vaccines at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, and one of 26 worldwide specialists who signed the open letter, published on Thursday.
In January, a group of scientists picked by the World Health Organization (WHO) visited hospitals and investigation institutes in Wuhan, the central Chinese city exactly where the coronavirus was identified, in search of clues about the origins of COVID-19.
But the mission has come beneath fire, with critics accusing the WHO of relying also substantially on politically compromised Chinese fieldwork and information.
Team members also stated China was reluctant to share crucial information that could show COVID-19 was circulating months earlier than initial recognised.
The open letter stated the WHO mission “did not have the mandate, the independence, or the necessary accesses to carry out a full and unrestricted investigation” into all theories about the origins of COVID-19.
“All possibilities remain on the table and I have yet to see a single piece of independent scientific data that rules out any of them,” stated Petrovsky.
At a press briefing to mark the finish of the WHO go to to Wuhan, mission head Peter Ben Embarek appeared to rule out the possibility that the virus leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan.
But Petrovsky stated it “doesn’t make any sense” to rule any possibility out, and stated the aim of the open letter was “to get an acknowledgement globally that no one has yet identified the source of the virus and we need to keep searching.”
“We need an open mind and if we close down some avenues because they are considered too sensitive, that is not how science operates,” he stated.
(This story has not been edited by TheSpuzz employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)