Scientists call for a new investigation into COVID-19 origins

A joint China-World Health Organization (WHO) analysis on coronavirus has yielded no reliable answers on how the pandemic started. A group of international scientists and researchers said on Wednesday. In the joint study published last week, bats and wildlife were identified in China and South-Eastern Asia as the most likely transmission path of SARS-CoV-2 causes the COVID-19 virus. The risk of leakage from a laboratory was completely ruled out.

However, 24 scientists and scholars from Europe, the United States, Australia, and Japan wrote an open letter claiming that this has corrupted by politics. Their starting point gets much consensus as to get any modest cooperation from China, said Jamie Metzl. A senior fellow at the Atlantic Council thinks tank and the letter’s author. The study’s finds, according to the letter, focused on unpublished Chinese studies. Although vital documents and biological samples “remain unavailable.”

China has denied that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a research laboratory in Wuhan:

Last week, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that China had withheld details. China’s senior COVID-19 specialist, Liang Wannian, refuted this and attempted to rule out any further joint inquiries in China. Moreover, stating that the priority should move to other countries. Metzl suggested an investigation in the most comprehensive manner without China’s participation. China has denied that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a research laboratory in Wuhan, the city where COVID-19 has discovered.

According to the joint China-WHO report, the lab leak was “extremely unlikely,” with “no record” of any laboratory keeping SARS-CoV-2-related viruses. Tedros said that more research needed to “reach more robust conclusions.” Metzl believes China should release details that would cause the lab theory to be disproved. Similarly, China has lists of what viruses were kept. There are lab notes about the work that has done, he said. There are all sorts of scientists who are actually doing the testing, and we don’t have access to all of those materials, or any of those people.