All paths are still open for the WHO, China continues to rule out the hypothesis of a laboratory escape and the USA has not yet found a common position. The Covid emergency is officially over, but three years after the outbreak of the most devastating pandemic in the last hundred years, there is still no answer to the most important question: what was the origin of the virus?
The first investigation into the matter took place in January 2021 with a mission of experts from the World Health Organization dispatched to the field in Wuhan, the city where it all began, working side-by-side with their Chinese counterparts. A team of super researchers, or “virus hunters” as they were renamed, who have faced the worst epidemics of their careers, from AIDS to Ebola. But after five months of meticulous analysis, the ten virologists came to the conclusion “In all probability” escape from the laboratory was ruled out but that the origin of Covid had not been identified. China hailed the definition of the research as “authoritative”, the WHO was overwhelmed by criticism from a segment of the scientific community, who accused it of being “in Beijing’s service” or at least unable to push through to get more information. Following an article in Nature that the UN agency had abandoned the second phase of the investigation into the origins due to a lack of cooperation from Chinese authorities, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus assured last February that it would continue until an answer was found will be how the pandemic began.
Meanwhile, the United States, which has several open fronts with China from Taiwan to Ukraine, has also conducted its investigations into the origin of the virus, but the many American agencies involved in the research have not come to a unified conclusion. A US Department of Energy report, published by The Wall Street Journal in late February, argues that the pandemic arose from a lab leak. A thesis that has only now been formulated thanks to “new intelligence information, research studies and consultations with non-governmental experts”. The FBI had some time ago reached the same conclusion, recently reiterated through the mouth of its director Christopher Wray, that “the pandemic most likely stemmed from an accident at the Wuhan lab.” The fact remains that for some US intelligence, the virus instead had a natural origin, a species leap from animals to humans that may have taken place right in the Wuhan market, 40 kilometers from the lab.
Even the White House didn’t want to go too far and after the release of the Department of Energy report, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby had to clarify that there is no consensus in the US administration on the issue. In fact, “we may never know” where the virus originated, former pandemic czar Anthony Fauci said recently, urging people to stay “open-minded” to the possibilities.
Read the full article on ANSA.it