WHO Calls On China To Release All Covid Data After Origins Clue Discovery
Genetic sequencing pointing to a possible zoonotic link to the start of the covid pandemic was unearthed this month on an international database — and then withdrawn by China when flagged. The World Health Organization is urging China to halt a pattern of hampering investigations into the virus' origins and to release all its available information.
Reuters:
WHO, Advisors Urge China To Release All COVID-Related Data After New Research
Advisors to the World Health Organization have urged China to release all information related to the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic after new findings were briefly shared on an international database used to track pathogens. New sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as well as additional genomic data based on samples taken from a live animal market in Wuhan, China in 2020 were briefly uploaded to the open access GISAID database by Chinese scientists earlier this year, allowing them to be viewed by researchers in other countries, according to a Saturday statement from the WHO's Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO). (3/18)
CIDRAP:
WHO Presses China To Share Previously Undisclosed SARS-CoV-2 Market Samples
Following a fleeting appearance of SARS-CoV-2 sequences from environmental swabs from the Wuhan market that was the early outbreak epicenter, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) today repeated its call for China to share virus information with the WHO and the scientific community. (Schnirring, 3/17)
Vox:
The Key To Covid’s Origin Lies In Beijing, Not Wuhan
There’s one entity that is best poised to answer one of the most important scientific questions of our time: How did the Covid-19 pandemic originate? ... It’s the Chinese government — and that, more than any other fact, is why it looks increasingly unlikely that we’ll ever find an answer that all parties can agree on to the question of what caused the worst pandemic in a century. That’s one main takeaway from several media reports published over the past day about a new analysis of genetic data taken from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, where the first human cases of Covid-19 emerged more than three years ago. The analysis, first reported by the Atlantic, shows that raccoon dogs that were being illegally sold in the market may have been carrying the novel coronavirus at the end of 2019.(Walsh, 3/18)
The New York Times:
Lab Leak Or Not? How Politics Shaped The Battle Over Covid’s Origin
The story of the hunt for Covid’s origin is partly about the stonewalling by China that has left scientists with incomplete evidence, all of it about a virus that is constantly changing. For all the data suggesting that the virus may have jumped into people from wild animals at a Chinese market, conclusive proof remains out of reach, as it does for the competing hypothesis that the virus leaked from a lab. But the story is also about politics and how both Democrats and Republicans have filtered the available evidence through their partisan lenses. (Stolberg and Mueller, 3/19)
