WHO inquiry into COVID-19 origins 'compromised by politics', say scientists awaiting overdue report
FirstpostA team of experts from the World Health Organisation on a mission to trace the origins of the COVID-19 epidemic, intend to scrap an eagerly-awaited interim report of their mission to China. The scientists elaborate on why the investigation report might be perceived as unreliable by the scientific community, saying, “the joint team did not have the mandate, the independence, or the necessary accesses” to perform a full and unrestricted investigation into the many SARS-CoV-2 origin hypotheses proposed. Peter Ben Embarek, of the World Health Organization team holds up a chart showing pathways of transmission of the virus during a joint press conference held at the end of the WHO mission in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province on Tuesday, 9 February 2021. On the contrary, plans being considered including scrapping the interim report altogether, according to food-safety scientist Peter Ben Embarek, who is leading the investigation team.