As Covid lab leak suspicion lingers, WHO urges China to share virus origin data

The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged Beijing to share data on the origins of the coronavirus, five years after the bug that ravaged the world was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

“We continue to call on China to share data and access so we can understand the origins of Covid-19. This is a moral and scientific imperative,” the WHO said in a statement Monday.

“Without transparency, sharing, and co-operation among countries, the world cannot adequately prevent and prepare for future epidemics and pandemics,” it added.

Most scientists believe that the virus jumped from animals to humans. In 2021, a team led by the WHO traveled to Wuhan and said it had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal, but added that more research was necessary.

But last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray said his agency assessed that “most likely a potential lab incident” in Wuhan led to the pandemic, supporting the controversial “lab leak” theory — although U.S. intelligence found no direct evidence to support that. China said at the time the claim had “no credibility whatsoever.”

The origin of the virus has also been a politically contentious issue in the U.S, after a Republican-led congressional pandemic subcommittee concludedearlier this month that, after a two-year investigation into the outbreak, the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory.

Democrats on the panel released their own report, arguing that the probe “failed to find the virus’s origins or advance our understanding of how the novel coronavirus came to be.”

Beijing hit back Tuesday at the WHO’s comments, saying it has shared information on Covid “without holding back.”

“On the issue of Covid-19 traceability, China has shared the most data and research results and made the greatest contribution to global traceability research,” said Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry.

“WHO’s international experts have repeatedly said that during their visit to China, they went to all the places they wanted to go and met all the people they wanted to see,” Mao added.

China went into lockdown in January 2020, with countries around the world quickly following suit to curb the spread of the virus. Schools were closed, staff told to work from home, flights canceled, mask mandates introduced, and people urged to stay indoors as the virus, which killed 40,000 people per month in Europe at the height of infection, surged around the world.

In 2023, genetic data gathered from a live food market in Wuhan was uploaded by Chinese scientists to an international database, which linked Covid-19 with raccoon dogs. A team of international researchers said they were the “most likely conduits” of the disease.

China has nevertheless faced criticism for its approach to communication about the outbreak, having stifled domestic reporting and imposed controls on scientific research into the origins of the virus. It also initially blocked entry to the WHO team in 2021 and tightly controlled the visit after it was allowed to go ahead. Chinese officials also suggested that the disease could have come from overseas. 

According to the WHO, more than 7 million people have died from Covid, while more than 760 million cases have been recorded worldwide. In May 2023, it said Covid-19 was no longer a public health emergency.