Scientists call for new probe into COVID-19 origins - with or without China

SHANGHAI - A joint China-World Health Organization (WHO) study into COVID-19 has provided no credible answers about how the pandemic began, and more rigorous investigations are required - with or without Beijing's involvement, a group of international scientists and researchers said on Wednesday.

The joint study, released last week, said the likeliest transmission route for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, involved bats and other wildlife in China and southeast Asia. It all but ruled out the possibility it had leaked from a laboratory.

In an open letter, 24 scientists and researchers from Europe, the United States, Australia and Japan said the study was tainted by politics.

"Their starting point was, let's have as much compromise as is required to get some minimal cooperation from China," said Jamie Metzl, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, who drafted the letter.

The letter said the study's conclusions were based on unpublished Chinese research, while critical records and biological samples "remain inaccessible".

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanon Ghebreyesus said last week China had withheld data.

Liang Wannian, China's senior COVID-19 expert, denied this and appeared to rule out any further joint investigations in China, saying the focus should shift to other countries.

Metzl said the world might have to "revert to Plan B" and conduct an investigation "in the most systematic way possible" without China's involvement.

China has rejected allegations that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a research laboratory in Wuhan, the city where COVID-19 was first identified.

The joint China-WHO study said the lab leak was "extremely unlikely", saying there was "no record" that any laboratory had kept SARS-CoV-2-related viruses. Tedros said more research was required to "reach more robust conclusions".

Metzl said China should disclose information that would allow the lab hypothesis to be disproved.

"China has databases of what viruses were being held... there are lab notes of the work that was being done," he said, "There are all kinds of scientists who are actually doing the work and we don't have access to any of those resources, or any of those people." 

(Reporting by David Stanway, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

-reuters-

Trump says US investigating whether virus came from Wuhan lab

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday his government is trying to determine whether the coronavirus emanated from a lab in Wuhan, China, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Beijing "needs to come clean" on what they know.

The source of the virus remains a mystery. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that U.S. intelligence indicates that the coronavirus likely occurred naturally, as opposed to being created in a laboratory in China, but there is no certainty either way.

Fox News reported on Wednesday that the virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory not as a bioweapon, but as part of China's effort to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States.

This report and others have suggested the Wuhan lab where virology experiments take place and lax safety standards there led to someone getting infected and appearing at a nearby "wet" market, where the virus began to spread.

At a White House news conference Trump was asked about the reports of the virus escaping from the Wuhan lab, and he said he was aware of them.

"We are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened," he said.

Asked if he had raised the subject in his conversations with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump said: "I don't want to discuss what I talked to him about the laboratory, I just don't want to discuss, it's inappropriate right now."

Trump has sought to stress strong U.S. ties with China during the pandemic as the United States has relied on China for personal protection equipment desperately needed by American medical workers.

As far back as February, the Chinese state-backed Wuhan Institute of Virology dismissed rumors that the virus may have been artificially synthesized at one of its laboratories or perhaps escaped from such a facility.

Pompeo, in a Fox News Channel interview after Trump's news conference, said "we know this virus originated in Wuhan, China," and that the Institute of Virology is only a handful of miles away from the wet market.

"We really need the Chinese government to open up" and help explain "exactly how this virus spread," said Pompeo.

"The Chinese government needs to come clean," he said.

The broad scientific consensus holds that SARS-CoV-2, the virus' official name, originated in bats.

Trump and other officials have expressed deep skepticism of China's officially declared death toll from the virus of around 3,000 people, when the United States has a death toll of more than 20,000 and rising.

He returned to the subject on Wednesday, saying the United States has more cases "because we do more reporting."

“Do you really believe those numbers in this vast country called China, and that they have a certain number of cases and a certain number of deaths; does anybody really believe that?” he said.

-reuters-