The World Health Organization has urged all countries to reveal what they know about the origins of Covid-19, after claims from several US government agencies that a Chinese lab leak was behind the disease were furiously denied by Beijing.
“If any country has information about the origins of the pandemic, it’s essential for that information to be shared with WHO and the international scientific community,” the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Friday.
The FBI director, Christopher Wray, told Fox News on Tuesday that his agency had now assessed the source of the Covid-19 pandemic was “most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan”.
The first infections from coronavirus were recorded in late 2019 in the Chinese city, which hosts a virus research laboratory. Chinese officials have denied the FBI claim, calling it a smear campaign against Beijing.
Tedros stressed that the WHO did not wish to apportion blame, but wanted to “advance our understanding of how this pandemic started so we can prevent, prepare for and respond to future epidemics and pandemics”.
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