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WHO doesn't agree to Lab leak as source of Covid-19 pandemic
Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment
- WHO's pandemic origin report: The World Health Organization (WHO) report into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic points to animals as the likely origin of the coronavirus and determines that a leak from a Chinese laboratory would be “extremely unlikely.” The long-awaited report is the most detailed account yet of what international experts know about how the coronavirus first began spreading in central China in late 2019 and then exploded globally in 2020, infecting more than 128 million people and causing the deaths of nearly 2.8 million worldwide.
- What we learn: The report offers little new evidence on the precise origin of the virus but details researchers’ conclusions on the likeliest theories of how the pandemic first spread. If researchers can gain a better understanding of how COVID-19 first took off, it could help prevent future pandemics. But not everyone sees the WHO report as the final say. China, which initially tried to cover up the spread of the virus within its borders in the critical early weeks of the outbreak, has lashed out at criticism that it is responsible for the pandemic.
- US reactions: U.S. officials during the Trump administration accused WHO of covering for China, leading former President Donald Trump to formally withdraw the United States from the international body at the height of the pandemic. Other researchers conclude that the United States can’t lay the blame of its pandemic woes squarely at China’s feet. Studies released at a Brookings Institution conference last week concluded that the Trump administration could have avoided as many as 400,000 deaths and saved hundreds of billions of dollars with better public health strategies while it awaited a widespread rollout of vaccines.
- Biden era: President Joe Biden reversed Trump’s decision and rejoined WHO, but senior Biden officials have also cast doubt on whether the WHO report’s conclusions are objective, alleging that the Chinese government could have tried to alter the conclusions of the report. “We’ve got real concerns about the methodology and the process that went into that report, including the fact that the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
- US versus CCP: U.S. lawmakers also joined in their criticism ahead of the report’s release. “The WHO should never have allowed the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] to have such a heavy hand in drafting this report,” Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said. “A report censored by the CCP is worse than no report at all because it allows the CCP to continue to spread misinformation about the virus and cover up the role they played in allowing it to spread. If we want to prevent the next pandemic, we need an accurate, objective, and trustworthy assessment of the origins of the virus.”
- Process of making the report: The 28-day study in Wuhan, conducted this year, was led by a multidisciplinary team of scientists including 17 from China, most of whom work for the state, and 17 drawn from a number of WHO member countries. The Chinese scientists conducted much of the initial research, which was then presented to their international counterparts during their visit to Wuhan. During the trip in January and February 2021, Chinese officials refused to share crucial raw data with investigators, leading to tense exchanges that at times descended into shouting matches. Concerns about the integrity of the WHO-led investigation prompted a small group of scientists to issue an open letter calling for a further independent investigation into the pandemic’s origins.
- Knowledge centre:
- Huanan wet markets - The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market (Huanan = 'South China') was a live animal and seafood market in Jianghan District, Wuhan, Hubei, China. The market became known after being identified as a possible point of origin of COVID-19 and the resulting pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) was informed on 31 December 2019 about an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan. Of the initial 41 people hospitalized with pneumonia who were officially identified as having laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection by 2 January 2020, two-thirds were exposed to the market. The market was opened on 19 June 2002 and was closed on 1 January 2020 for sanitary procedures and disinfection.
- Zoonotic diseases - A zoonosis is an infectious disease caused by a pathogen (an infectious agent, such as a bacterium, virus, parasite or prion) that has jumped from an animal to a human. Major diseases such as Ebola virus disease and salmonellosis are zoonoses. HIV was a zoonotic disease transmitted to humans in the early part of the 20th century, though it has now mutated to a separate human-only disease. Zoonoses can be caused by a range of disease pathogens such as emergent viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites; of 1,415 pathogens known to infect humans, 61% were zoonotic. In direct zoonosis the disease is directly transmitted from animals to humans through media such as air (influenza) or through bites and saliva (rabies). There has been a rise in frequency of appearance of new zoonotic diseases, due to mankind's interference in natural regions and processes.
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