WHO accuses China of hiding data on Covid-19 origin

The World Health Organization has chastised Chinese officials for suppressing scientific data that could identify the origin of the Covid-19, a report said.

The WHO also questioned the Chinese official on Friday (local time) about the reasons for not disclosing the data three years ago and why, after it was put online in January, it could not be located now. An multinational team of virus experts downloaded and began analysing the information before it vanished into the internet domain. The data supports the hypothesis that the epidemic began with illegally traded raccoon dogs, which infected humans at China’s Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

But the team couldn’t reach the final result as the gene sequences were removed from a scientific database once the experts offered to collaborate on the analysis with their Chinese counterparts, according to The New York Times.

“These data could have — and should have — been shared three years ago,” Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director general, said. The missing evidence now “needs to be shared with the international community immediately,” he said.

According to the expert team, which was reviewing the data, the research offers evidence that raccoon dogs, fox-like animals known to spread coronaviruses, had left behind DNA in the same place in the Wuhan market that genetic signatures of the new coronavirus also were discovered.

According to some researchers, this evidence implies that the animals were infected and may have spread the virus to humans.

The genetic data, which was obtained from swabs of animal cages, carts, and other surfaces at the Wuhan market in early 2020, had been the focus of restless anticipation among virus experts since they learned about it a year ago in a paper by Chinese scientists, according to The New York Times.