GENEVA, February 15. /TASS/. Media reports of the World Health Organization (WGO) allegedly abandoning its investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic are inaccurate, WHO Spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic told TASS on Wednesday, particularly referring to an article in the Nature journal.
"The Nature article is inaccurate and misleading so we asked for correction/clarification," he noted. "To say that the WHO ‘quietly shelved the plan’ is completely inaccurate," Jasarevic pointed out.
"We have always and consistently stated that to advance knowledge we needed and still need studies - and for this we need from China the access, the data, and we need them to undertake these studies in a transparent manner," the WHO spokesperson went on to say. "We kept and keep asking for this and without it we can’t advance the knowledge," he added.
According to Jasarevic, the creation of the Scientific Advisory Group for Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) was the WHO’s "best effort to move things along to the extent possible." "SAGO is in fact examining any new evidence that might arise while continuing to ask China for access and data," he stressed. The group is also working "on a broader origins framework for future outbreaks."
The Nature journal and the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported earlier that The World Health Organization (WHO) had shelved its investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic due to data collection issues.
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.