While the FBI and the US Department of Energy ruled that a lab leak was the source of the Covid-19 pandemic, the WHO on Friday urged all countries to share their information.
“If a country has information on the origins of the pandemic, it is essential that this information is shared with the WHO and the international scientific community,” said the organization’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, during the meeting. his regular press conference.
This is not about “pointing the blame”, he said, but about “advancing our understanding of how this pandemic began, so that we can prevent future epidemics and pandemics, prepare for them and respond to it.”
Senior officials solicited at the United Nations
FBI Director Christopher Wray said this week that a laboratory accident in Wuhan was “very likely” at the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, two days after a similar hypothesis put forward by the US Department of Energy.
Asked specifically about this, Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the Covid response at the WHO, explained that the agency had requested information from senior officials at the American Representation to the United Nations in Geneva.
“We have sent requests (…) for information on the latest report from the Department of Energy, but also on additional reports from various American agencies”, she detailed.
“At this time, we do not have access to these reports or the data that led to these reports,” she said. The scientific community believes that it is crucial to know the origins of this scourge in order to be able to fight it better or even avoid a future pandemic.