LONDON, February 15. /TASS/. The World Health Organization (WHO) has shelved its investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic due to data collection issues, the Daily Telegraph reported, citing WHO epidemiologist Dr Maria Van Kerkhove.

According to her, the WHO planned to conduct the work in phases but "that plan has changed." "The politics across the world of this really hampered progress on understanding the origins," she said, adding: "There is no phase two."

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced in July 2021 that the organization was getting ready for phase two of its probe into the pandemic’s origins and expected transparency from the Chinese authorities. He added that some problems had emerged during phase one, particularly in terms of access to information.

The media reported on Tuesday that US House of Representatives Republicans had launched an investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, requesting information from the Washington administration.

The March 2021 joint report by the WHO and China, published following an international mission to Wuhan, said that the most likely scenario of the emergence of COVID-19 was the transmission of the disease from bats to another animal, which subsequently infected humans. However, the specialists did not reach a conclusion as to how the virus appeared at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan. There were also assumptions of its laboratory origin.