The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged all countries “to put differences aside” in order to speed up investigations into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus – including the unproven suggestion that it was accidentally released from laboratory.
This announcement follows a joint report into the origins of the coronavirus issued in March by the WHO and China. The UN agency, noting “insufficient scientific evidence to rule any of the hypotheses out” about the origins of the new coronavirus, insisted that to address the ‘lab hypothesis’, it needed access “to all data” in order to prevent global health threats in future.
“WHO calls for all governments to depoliticise the situation and cooperate to accelerate the origins studies, and importantly to work together to develop a common framework for future emerging pathogens of pandemic potential,” it said.
“We call on all governments to put differences aside and work together to provide all data and access required so that the next series of studies can be commenced as soon as possible.”
In a detailed statement, WHO explained the need for additional studies into “all hypotheses” about how SARS-CoV-2 made the jump from animals to humans.
Transparency call
A new independent advisory group of experts, the International Scientific Advisory Group for Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), will support the project by coordinating the studies recommended in the March report, it said.
Nominations for the panel would be welcomed from all countries, WHO said, whose task would be similar to previous COVID missions to China and those launched to investigate the origins of avian influenza, Lassa virus and Ebola virus.
“This open call aims to ensure that a broad range of scientific skills and expertise are identified to advise WHO on the studies needed to identify the origins of any future emerging or re-emerging pathogen of pandemic potential,” the UN agency said.
Scientific endeavour
Noting how hard it is to identify the origin of any novel pathogen, the agency insisted that the mission “is not and should not be an exercise in attributing blame, finger-pointing or political point-scoring. It is vitally important to know how the COVID pandemic began, to set an example for establishing the origins of all future animal-human spill-over events.”
Access to sensitive information was needed for the success of the operation with “a further examination of the raw data from the earliest cases”, along with blood serum from potentially infected people in 2019, before the pandemic.
Data sharing
Data from “a number of countries” that reported finding the virus in blood samples taken in 2019 has already been shared with WHO, it noted. This included Italy, where WHO coordinated retesting of pre-pandemic blood samples outside the country.
“Sharing raw data and giving permission for the retesting of samples in labs outside of Italy reflects scientific solidarity at its best and is no different from what we encourage all countries, including China, to support so that we can advance the studies of the origins quickly and effectively,” WHO said, and restated that access to data was “critically important for evolving our understanding of science and should not be politicised in any way”.
Source: UN News
