The US and the UK have sharply criticised a World Health Organizationreport into the beginnings of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan, implicitly accusing China of “withholding access to complete, original data and samples”.
The statement – also signed by 12 other countries including Australia and Canada – came hard on the heels of the admission on Tuesday by head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus – that the investigation was “not extensive enough” and that experts had struggled to access raw information during their four-week visit to Wuhan in January.
Tedros also said there should be continued examination of the theory that the virus had escaped from a Wuhan institute of virology laboratory, even though the report deemed it “extremely unlikely” as a source of the pandemic – a theory promoted by some in the Trump administration.
