WHO pursues all lines of inquiry into SARS-CoV-2 origin

GENEVA, March 1. /TASS/. The World Health Organization (WHO) will pursue all lines of inquiry into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus until it receives evidence in favor of any of them, WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic told TASS on Wednesday.

In response to a request for comment regarding a statement by the Director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Christopher Wray to the effect that his agency believed a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the most likely cause of the pandemic, Jasarevic said: "The WHO has seen media reports, but has not received any information on this particular assessment. Until we have more evidence all hypothesis are still on the table."

"The WHO and SAGO [Scientific Advisory Group on the Origins of Novel Pathogens] will keep examining all available scientific evidence that would help us advance the knowledge on the origin of SARS CoV 2, and we call on China and the scientific community to undertake necessary studies in that direction," Jasarevic said.

Wray told Fox News on Tuesday that the FBI believed a leak from a lab in Wuhan, China, was the most likely cause of the pandemic. He claimed that the Chinese government, in his opinion, "has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate" the efforts of the United States and its partners to establish the circumstances of the outbreak of the pandemic.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus earlier urged China to cooperate in investigating the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Speaking at a news briefing in Geneva on February 15, he said that he had sent a corresponding message to high-ranking officials in China.

A joint report by the WHO and China, released in March 2021 following an international mission to Wuhan, said that the most likely scenario for the emergence of COVID-19 was the transfer of the disease from bats to another animal, which later infected humans. However, experts have not come to a final conclusion yet on how exactly the virus got into Wuhan’s Huanan seafood market. There have been speculations about its laboratory origin.