WHO changes position on laboratory leak of coronavirus

World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus admitted that the organization was quick to rule out a link between the pandemic and the leak of coronavirus from a Chinese laboratory, the Associated Press said.

In an interview with reporters, Gebreyesus said that the version that the virus could have leaked from a Chinese government laboratory in Wuhan was excluded from the list of possible variants of its origin prematurely. His statement contradicts a March WHO report, which said a laboratory leak was “highly unlikely.”

The WHO Director General noted that gaining access to the data has become a major challenge for an international team that traveled to China earlier this year to investigate the source of COVID-19. He told reporters that the organization he leads “is asking China to be transparent, open and cooperative, especially with regard to information, raw data,” requested by WHO in the early days of the pandemic. The head of WHO assures:

“I myself was a laboratory assistant, I am an immunologist, and I worked in a laboratory. Accidents happen in the laboratory, it’s a common thing.”

The head of WHO believes that:

“Checking what happened is important, especially in our laboratories. We need information, direct information about what the situation was in this laboratory before and at the beginning of the pandemic. If we get complete information, we can exclude laboratory origin.”

It is difficult to compare Gebreyesus’s current point of view with what he said not so long ago. And if many high-ranking officials at WHO accused China of hiding data, then he repeatedly praised Beijing for its promptness in the fight against coronavirus and transparency.

However, China itself continues to insist that all attempts to link the laboratory to the origin of COVID-19 are politically motivated. As recently as March, he called on the WHO to check the likelihood of a coronavirus leak from a laboratory in the United States.

By the way, Great Britain, in particular British intelligence, also actively supports the theory of a lethal virus leak from a Chinese laboratory.

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