Who calls for China to share Covid evidence data

Von WOM

The World Health Organization (WHO) asked China to share data to understand the origins of Covid-19, five years after the beginning of pandemic in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

The beginning of pandemic and the first warnings

On December 31, 2019, the WHO office in China reported a cluster of “Lung inflammation” cases in a statement by the health authorities in Wuhan. More than three weeks later, the Chinese authorities blocked the city with 11 million inhabitants. The fear of a rapidly spreading virus seized the country. However, as the authorities were to experience later, the Coronavirus had already spread far beyond the borders of China.

Questions about the origins of Covid-19

Despite the fact that most countries have recovered from the Lockdowns and Limitations of Pandemic, there are many questions about the source of a virus that cost at least seven million people and paralyzed the health systems and let the global economy get out of joint. Many experts believe that China's lack of transparency has made it difficult to find answers to the origins of pandemic.

The demand for transparency

"We continue to ask China to share data and access so that we can understand the origins of Covid-19. This is a moral and scientific bid," said the WHO in a statement on Monday. "Without transparency, exchange and cooperation between the countries, the world cannot adequately prevent future epidemics and pandemics."

China's defense of data transparency

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs defended the country's dealings with Covid 19 data during a regular press conference on Tuesday. "With regard to the pursuit of origin of Covid-19, China has always kept the spirit of science, openness and transparency. China has actively supported global scientific follow-up and decidedly opposes every political manipulation," said Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the Ministry.

controversies and political tensions

The question of how pandemic began is subject to intensive scientific studies and heated political debates. Opinions are shared whether the virus comes from a natural excess of animal or a laboratory leak. Many scientists believe that the virus originally occurred in the wilderness before he passed from infected animals to humans and spread through a wet market in Wuhan. The suspicions of a possible laboratory leak from a nearby laboratory that were initially dismissed as a conspiracy theory are persistent and were supported by some researchers.

Who and China: A tense relationship

The search for the origins of the virus is controversial from the start and an essential source of political tensions. The United States and other western countries have repeatedly accused China of holding back the original and complete data- which Beijing vehemently contested. WHO-officials have also criticized China's strict control over data access, with an official called the lack of data in 2023 as "simply unacceptable".

data that was finally accessible

At that time,

Chinese health authorities answered and said that China had provided the WHO expert group all the information that had to hold back "without cases, samples or their test results and analysis results with regard to the origins of the virus". For years, the global health agency had called for access to test results from market workers and other raw data that China had collected at the beginning of pandemic.

not in 2023, three years after the beginning of the pandemic, the WHO received access to certain data that Chinese scientists had collected at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in early 2020. The raw genetic sequences from the samples had been uploaded to the GISAID data sharing platform. These were soon removed, but they had already noticed ingenious researchers and downloaded them for further studies.

a new look at epidemiology

An analysis of this material, which was published in the examined journal Cell in September, showed that Corona-prone animals and the corona virus, which caused Covid-19, were present in a certain area of ​​the market, although the study was not confirmed whether the animals themselves were infected with the virus.

In the statement on Monday, the WHO summarized that on December 31, 2019, the state office in China included a message from the Wuhan municipal health commission on cases of “viral pneumonia” in the city. "In the weeks, months and years that followed, Covid-19 shapes our life and our world," it said. "If we commit this significant date, we should pause for a moment to honor the changed and lost lives that to commemorate those suffering from Covid-19 and Long-Covid to thank the health workers who have sacrificed so much to take care of us and oblige us to learn from Covid-19 to create a healthier future."