The head of the WHO today dismissed his own agency’s expert report into the origins of Covid-19 which the US has rejected as a political whitewash after it described the lab-leak theory touted by Washington as ‘extremely unlikely’.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus accused China of withholding data from a WHO panel and said the lab-leak theory should be studied further, only moments after the publication of the long-awaited report which rejected the idea altogether.
‘Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation,’ said Tedros.
‘I expect future collaborative studies to include more timely and comprehensive data sharing,’ he added – in an astonishing rebuke to China for a figure who has long been accused of being too close to Beijing.
Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s top diplomats have dismissed the report as biased towards China, with former secretary of state Mike Pompeo calling it a ‘sham’ and current envoy Antony Blinken saying that ‘Beijing apparently helped to write it’.
Pompeo branded the report a ‘disinformation campaign’ by China’s Communist party and the WHO, adding that the Wuhan Institute of Virology ‘remains the most likely source of the virus – and WHO is complicit’.
One of the team’s investigators has already said that China refused to give raw data on early Covid-19 cases to the team probing the origins of the pandemic.
But China praised the experts for their ‘scientific, diligent and professional spirit’, saying any further research should take place in other countries where it claims the virus could have originated.
The 120-page report was drafted by WHO scientists and their Chinese counterparts after an expert mission to Wuhan earlier this year which was plagued by doubts about China’s transparency.
The report – which says that the names of the 10-strong panel were presented to Beijing for approval – praises Wuhan’s labs as ‘well-managed’ facilities where the virus is unlikely to have leaked.
But it gives more credence to Beijing’s pet theory that the virus could have originated elsewhere and been imported on frozen food – saying it is ‘possible’, though unlikely.
The report says the virus likely jumped from animals but leaves numerous questions unanswered, such as which animal was the suspected link between bats and humans – with mink, pangolins, rabbits and ferret badgers all named as suspects.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, pictured shaking hands with Chinese leader Xi Jinping last January, has been accused of being too close to Beijing
Mission leader Peter Ben Embarek (pictured) said the virus could have originated in China and spread abroad before it was first detected in Wuhan
Verdict: The WHO report says Covid-19 is ‘likely to very likely’ to have jumped to humans via a bat and another animal, might alternatively have jumped to humans in a single step, could possibly have via imported food and is ‘extremely unlikely’ to have leaked from a laboratory
The report authors offered a ranked list of four possible ways the virus could have made the jump to humans, calling a direct leap ‘possible to likely’ and a scenario with an intermediate animal ‘likely to very likely’.
China’s frozen-food theory is judged ‘possible’ while the lab-leak theory is in last place with a verdict of ‘extremely unlikely’.
The lab-leak claims have centred on the high-security Wuhan Institute of Virology based in the city where the outbreak first came to light.
The Trump administration claimed in its final days in office that some researchers at the lab had become sick in autumn 2019, before the first cases were confirmed.
But the WHO report rejects these claims, saying a staff monitoring programme had uncovered no suspicious illnesses in the weeks and months before the outbreak.
The WHO scientists acknowledged that ‘although rare, laboratory accidents do happen’.
But they said there is no record of any laboratory possessing viruses closely related to Covid-19 before December 2019, or sequences of genomes that could have produced the coronavirus in combination.
They also believe that the risk of ‘accidental culturing’ of the virus is ‘extremely low’.
The report says that one Wuhan lab moved to a new location near the Huanan seafood market on December 2, noting that ‘such moves can be disruptive for the operations of any laboratory’. But it said that staff had ‘reported no disruptions or incidents caused by the move’.
‘In view of the above, a laboratory origin of the pandemic was considered to be extremely unlikely,’ the report said.
However, Tedros said today that more work was needed, saying: ‘I do not believe that this assessment was extensive enough.’
On Beijing’s imported-food theory, the report says that ‘seafood is known as a source of foodborne outbreaks’ and added that China appeared to have experienced some outbreaks linked to frozen food since the initial wave of the disease.
‘The virus has been found on packages and products from other countries that supply China with cold-chain products, indicating that it can be carried long distances on cold-chain products,’ the scientists said.
However, they added that ‘the probability of a cold-chain contamination with the virus from a reservoir is very low’.
‘The consensus was that given the level of evidence, the potential for [Covid-19] introduction via cold/ food chain products is considered possible,’ it said.
Echoing China’s efforts to cast doubt on whether the virus originated in Wuhan at all, the report said that ‘it remains to be determined where SARS-CoV-2 originated’.
But it noted that evidence of the virus spreading before December 2019 had surfaced in numerous countries including Italy and France, even though China has never acknowledged a case from before that month.
Mission leader Peter Ben Embarek said the virus could have originated in China and spread abroad before it was first detected in Wuhan.
He added that the team had never expected to come up with a definitive answer on the virus source – with numerous questions remaining unanswered.
Mystery still surrounds the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan after scientists said they could reach ‘no firm conclusion’ on whether it was to blame for the outbreak.
‘Many of the early cases were associated with the Huanan market, but a similar number of cases were associated with other markets and some were not associated with any markets,’ they said.
However, they added that infections seemingly unconnected to the market could in fact have been linked by mild cases of Covid-19 which were never identified.
Tedros said today that ‘farmers, suppliers and their contacts will need to be interviewed’ as he called for further investigations into the origins of the disease.
Scientists also did not come to a conclusion on which animal might have been the link between bats and humans.
While the closest known viruses to Covid-19 have been found in bats, the ‘evolutionary distance’ between them is thought to be ‘several decades’.
That suggests a ‘missing link’ which might have been filled by mink, pangolins, rabbits or ferret badgers among other candidates, the report says.
Members of the WHO’s expert panel arrive to visit a museum exhibition about China’s fight against Covid-19, on a visit in January which raised doubts about China’s transparency
Chinese theory: Beijing has embraced the suggestion that the virus could have been imported on frozen food from abroad
In Geneva on Monday, Dr Tedros had stressed that ‘all hypotheses are open, from what I read from the report… and warrant complete and further studies’.
The UK and US both raised concerns about China’s transparency during the WHO trip, which followed months of negotiations with Beijing.
The investigative panel was set up last July after countries including Australia angered China by calling for an investigation.
It took months to select the 10 international experts, including epidemiologists and animal health specialists, amid diplomatic wrangling with China.
The report says that the list of experts was given to Beijing in September last year, which responded two weeks later that it had ‘no objection’.
In the end, they arrived in Wuhan more than a year after the virus was first identified there before erupting around the world and killing more than two million people.
The WHO report left ‘not everything answered’ but was ‘surely a good start’, Dutch virologist and team member Marion Koopmans said.
But Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious diseases expert, said he would like to see the report’s raw information first before deciding about its credibility.
‘I’d also would like to inquire as to the extent in which the people who were on that group had access directly to the data that they would need to make a determination,’ he said.
‘I want to read the report first and then get a feel for what they really had access to – or did not have access to.’
Scientists in several countries including France and Italy have found evidence that the virus had already reached them in the final months of 2019.
But it was not until December 31, 2019 that the WHO’s China office was informed of a mystery pneumonia which had sickened 44 people in Wuhan.
Later, the WHO was informed that at least one patient in Wuhan – a major transport hub – had been showing symptoms as early as December 8.
A separate WHO-backed report said it was ‘clear’ that ‘public health measures could have been applied more forcefully by local and national health authorities in China’ last January.
It said there was ‘potential for early signs to have been acted on more rapidly’ by both China and the WHO.
Mike Pompeo, the former US secretary of state under Donald Trump, slammed the report as a political whitewash by China’s Communist party
US theory: Washington has touted claims that the virus could have leaked out of the high-security Wuhan Institute of Virology, pictured last month
The criticism was at odds with the WHO’s public statements at the time, when it praised China for the ‘remarkable speed’ with which it responded to the outbreak.
Beijing has touted its recovery from the early outbreak as a triumph for its Communist leaders, with China’s economy the only major one to grow in 2020.
But numerous reports have detailed how China withheld key details about the virus in its early stages, including from the WHO which has praised China in public.
A young doctor, Li Wenliang, was reprimanded by police after trying to raise the alarm about the disease – and later died of it.
Human Rights Watch director Ken Roth said the WHO was guilty of ‘institutional complicity’ when it gave credence to some of Beijing’s early claims about the outbreak.
‘WHO has absolutely refused as an institution to say anything critical about China’s cover-up of human-to-human transmission, or its ongoing refusal to provide the basic evidence,’ he told reporters last month.
‘What we need is an honest, vigorous inquiry rather than further deference to China’s cover-up efforts.’
One diplomatic observer in Geneva said the WHO had let China do the preliminary investigative work on its own, and then control the terms of the investigation.
They added that some member states who had criticised the situation in private steered away from public criticsm.
Trump famously slammed the WHO over its relationship with Beijing, accusing the WHO of being a ‘puppet of China’ and covering up the initial outbreak of the virus.
He began the 12-month process of withdrawing from the organisation last July – a policy immediately reversed by his successor Joe Biden in January.
Covid-19 has killed more than 2.8 million people worldwide in the 15 months since it emerged, forcing governments around the world to introduce punishing restrictions that have pummelled the global economy.
WHO’s ‘China-centric’ chief is a career politician who worked for a Communist junta and became the first NON-doctor Director-General ‘following intense lobbying from Beijing’
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a little-known figure before the coronavirus pandemic, has risen to prominence as Director-General of the World Health Organisation which is spearheading global responses to the virus.
Dr Tedros – who has never practised as a medical doctor – is a career politician who was born in what is now Eritrea, began work under the Communist Derg junta, came to study in the UK, then rose to the top of Ethiopia’s government first as Health Minister and then Foreign Minister before being elected to lead the WHO in 2017.
He has faced heavy criticism over his handling of the pandemic, especially for praise he heaped on China’s communist party for its response – hailing the regime’s ‘commitment to transparency’ and saying the speed with which it detected the virus was ‘beyond words’.
That has led to allegations – including by Donald Trump – that the WHO is ‘China-centric’, and prompted Trump to pull US funding to the UN body.
It was not the first time that Dr Tedros has been accused of cosying up to China. Shortly after his election victory in 2017, it was alleged that Chinese diplomats had been heavily involved in lobbying for him.
UN records also show that Chinese contributions to both Ethiopia’s aid budget and the WHO have substantially increased during times when he was in top leadership positions.
Dr Tedros (left) became the first African head of the WHO and the first non-medical doctor to hold the role when he was elected in 2017, amid allegations of heavy lobbying by China (pictured, Dr Tedros in Beijing shortly after his election)
Shortly after his election to the WHO, a report in The Times said: ‘Chinese diplomats had campaigned hard for the Ethiopian, using Beijing’s financial clout and opaque aid budget to build support for him among developing countries.’
Dr Tedros – who is married and has five children – was born in 1965 in Asmara, which was part of Ethiopia at the time but is now in Eritrea.
As a child he saw his younger brother die to an infection, which he believes was measles, which he later said spurred his determination to work on health and health policy.
He graduated from university in Ethiopia in 1986 with a degree in biology and went to work as a health official in the regime of Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, while the country was ruled by the Derg military junta.
According to the BBC, Dr Tedros then joined the hard-left TPLF – which started life as a Communist party and played a major role in overthrowing Mariam in 1991. It later became part of the EPRDF, a coalition of left-wing parties that ruled Ethiopia until last year.
Around the same time as Mariam’s ouster, Dr Tedros left Ethiopia and came to the UK where he studied at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, graduating with Masters of Science in Immunology of Infectious Diseases in 1992.
He then went on to study at the University of Nottingham, where he received a PhD in community health in 2000.
After this, he returned to Ethiopia where he joined the health ministry and rose through the ranks from regional health minister all the way to national Minister for Heath – a position he took up in 2005.
During his tenure, which lasted until 2012, he was widely praised for opening thousands of health centres, employing tens of thousands of medics, bringing down rates of HIV/AIDS, measles and malaria, as well as bringing information technology and the internet into the heath system.
In November 2012 he was promoted to Foreign Minister, and was widely hailed for helping to negotiate a boost in UN funding for Ethiopia, including as part of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.
Indeed, UN funding records show that around this time the country received millions in additional funding – including from China, which had previously given little or nothing to support the country.
In 2015 and 2016 China gave some $16million to Ethiopia in spending commitments and cash contributions, largely in support of food or refugee programmes.
In 2011, just before Dr Tedros took up the role, and in 2017, just after he left, China handed over another $44million in commitments and contributions.
Its total contributions outside of this period, dating back to the year 2000, were just $345,000.
In 2017, Dr Tedros left the Ethiopian government and entered the running for Director-General of the WHO as the tenure of Dr Margaret Chan, a Canadian-Chinese physician, was coming to an end.
The election was the first to take place under a system of polling all UN member states as part of a secret ballot. Previously, leaders were chosen by a closed-door vote of an executive committee.
Eventually the field was boiled down to two candidates – Dr Tedros and Briton Dr David Nabarro, a life-long physician who had helped lead UN responses to previous outbreaks including bird flu, the cholera outbreak in Haiti, and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Before ascending to the top ranks of the WHO, Dr Tedros studied in the UK and served Ethiopia’s ruling left-wing coalition as health minister and then as foreign minister (pictured in the role in 2015)
Dr Tedros won the ballot by a reported 133 votes to 50, becoming the first African leader of the WHO and the first non-medic to hold the role. His victory came in part thanks to 50 out of 54 African states voting for him.
However, he quickly mired himself in controversy by recommending African dictator Robert Mugabe as a WHO Goodwill Ambassador, amid allegations he trying to repay favours granted during the election.
There were reports that the move was also intended to reward China, a long-time supporter of Mugabe, for using its influence to have him elected.
The Times added: ‘China has praised the authoritarian development model of Ethiopia’s regime, which rules under emergency powers and has put down pro-democracy protests.’
During the 2017 election itself, several groups within Ethiopia opposed Dr Tedros’s appointment due to his links with the TPLF and allegations that they stifled journalists and repressed minorities.
Dr Tedros was also accused of covering up three separate cholera outbreaks in 2006, 2008 and 2011 by mis-reporting it as ‘watery diarrhea’, allegations he dismissed as a ‘smear campaign’ by his British rival.
Following his election to the WHO, Dr Tedros vowed to reform the organisation by placing an emphasis on universal healthcare at its centre while also increasing funding.
Further UN funding records show that, during his tenure, assessed contributions to the WHO by China have also risen significantly – from roughly $23million in 2016 to $38million in 2019.
China has also committed to a further $57million in funding in 2020, though has yet to pay the balance.
Meanwhile funding from other major world economies – including the US, Russia, Japan and Germany – has remained largely flat or even fallen over the same period.
Assessed contributions make up only around a quarter of the WHO’s budget, the rest of which comes from donations.