WHO team head investigating origins of Covid calls for closer look at China lab
Live MintThe Danish head of a World Health Organization-led team that traveled to China earlier this year to probe the origins of Covid-19 called for closer scrutiny of a laboratory near the site of the first known cluster of cases at a market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. “It’s interesting that the lab relocated on the 2nd of December 2019: That’s the period where it all started," Dr. Ben Embarek said in the TV interview. “The Wuhan CDC lab which moved on 2nd December 2019 reported no disruptions or incidents caused by the move," the WHO’s joint report said. But Dr. Ben Embarek is the first to so explicitly question the team’s conclusion, published in a joint report with Chinese counterparts, that a lab accident was an “extremely unlikely" hypothesis. That wording was only reached after a 48 hour period of intense negotiations with Chinese counterparts said Dr. Ben Embarek, who said he would have preferred to designate an accident inside a lab as merely “unlikely."