WUHAN’s coronavirus lab may dodge an investigation into the pandemic as a World health Organisation team won’t bother visiting, it’s reported.
The WHO – which has been accused of “parroting Chinese propaganda” and heaping praise on Beijing – said last week it was sending a mission to China.
The organisation said the delegation would seek to “advance the understanding of animal hosts for Covid-19 and ascertain how the disease jumped between animals and humans”.
But the statement suggests the organisation accepts China’s story that the virus was transmitted naturally to people, possibly in a wet market in Wuhan that sells exotic wildlife for meat.
And the WHO has now seemingly ruled out a visit to the now infamous lab in the city where very similar viruses were being studied, The Times reports.
Questions have been raised about the activities of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, after reports China found an almost identical coronavirus strain in bats and sent it to the lab for examination.
‘NO CREDIBILITY’
But to the dismay of some scientists, the WHO indicated that its mission, being prepared by two of its experts who flew to Beijing last week, would look only at “the zoonotic source” of the outbreak.
Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said: “An inquiry that presupposes – without evidence – that the virus entered humans through a natural zoonotic spillover and that fails to address the alternative possibility that the virus entered humans through a laboratory accident, will have no credibility.
“To have any credibility and any value, an investigation must address the possibility that the virus entered humans through a laboratory accident and must also address the further possibility that the ability of the virus to infect humans was enhanced through laboratory manipulation.”
His fears were echoed by Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor of endocrinology at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, who is leading his country’s first human trials of a vaccine.
He said the WHO delegation must quiz their Chinese counterparts on RaTG13 – the virus strain reportedly being studied at the lab that is 96% identical to Covid-19.
Petrovsky said: “Was any attempt made to clone RaTG13 virus?
“Were any gene sequences from presumed RaTG13 virus ever synthesised? If so, where and when?
“What was done with these cloned sequences?”
The Chinese government has bristled at claims its scientists could have been behind the outbreak, instead pointing the finger at the Wuhan wet market.
But it has since emerged that four of the first five confirmed cases of Covid-19 had no link to the market.
Donald Trump previously said he has “evidence” the deadly pandemic originated in the secretive Wuhan lab.
And he has repeatedly slammed the WHO, claiming China “has total control” over it and pulling the US out of the organisation.
