March 5, 2023 Updated: March 5, 2023
Chief of the World
Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during a meeting at the
WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 24, 2021. (Laurent
Gillieron/AFP via Getty Images)
In another narrative shift
on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization
(WHO) asked governments with intelligence on the virus to come forward, after a
growing number of U.S. officials signaled that it may have resulted from a
Chinese lab leak.
“If any country has
information about the origins of the pandemic, it’s essential for that
information to be shared with WHO and the international scientific community,”
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on March 3.
The request came after
FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News last week that the bureau has
determined that the COVID-19 pandemic’s source was “most likely a
potential lab incident in Wuhan,” China. Wray’s assertion comes nearly three
years after claims emerged that the virus emerged from the P4 Wuhan Institute
of Virology, although such assertions were downplayed or even labeled as
misinformation in early 2020 by so-called fact-checkers, social media
platforms, and mainstream media outlets.
The very first COVID-19
infections were recorded in late 2019 in Wuhan. Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
officials have claimed that the virus was first transmitted at a wet market in
the city, although a team of WHO investigators was blocked by the CCP from
investigating the origins in 2021.
In his remarks last week,
Tedros stressed that the WHO didn’t wish to blame any government or organization.
Instead, the WHO is seeking to “advance our understanding of how this pandemic
started so we can prevent, prepare for and respond to future epidemics and
pandemics.”
“WHO continues to call
for China to be transparent in sharing data and to conduct the necessary
investigations and share the results,” said Tedros, who has drawn criticism
for having ties
with the CCP’s leadership. “Until then, all hypotheses on the origins of
the virus remain on the table.”
Earlier on in the
pandemic, the WHO came under criticism after Tedros and other officials praised
the CCP for its “transparency” in dealing with
COVID-19.
“What they are doing is a
very, very strong measure and with full commitment,” Tedros said of the regime
in early 2020, weeks after the virus emerged.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the
WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, told reporters that the
U.N. health organization has contacted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Geneva,
Switzerland, for more information regarding the FBI director’s statement.
“It remains vital that
that information is shared,” she said.
Wray’s
Remarks
In late February and in
his first remarks on the COVID-19 pandemic’s origins, Wray told Fox News that
there’s an FBI team that focuses explicitly on biological threats that fall
into the “wrong hands,” including a “hostile nation-state.”
This aerial view shows
the P4 laboratory (L) on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in
Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on May 13, 2020. (Hector RETAMAL /AFP via Getty
Images)
“You’re talking about a
potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of
Americans,” Wray said of the virus, “and that’s precisely what that capability
was designed for.”
Wray noted that the
bureau’s investigation is still classified and that he can’t share many
details. He also said the CCP hasn’t been cooperative with U.S. efforts.
“I will just make the
observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its
best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here,” the FBI director said. “The
work that our U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing. And that’s
unfortunate for everybody.”
Wray’s concession last
week marks the second time in recent days that a federal government agency has
publicly backed the lab leak hypothesis. A Department of Energy report also
backed the assessment that the virus may have emerged from the Wuhan lab.
Amid the reports,
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said last week that President
Joe Biden supports “a whole of government” attempt to find the origin of the
virus.
“We’re just not there
yet,” he told reporters. “If we have something that is ready to be briefed to
the American people and the Congress, we will do that.”
At about the same time,
Republicans and Democrats in the Capitol indicated that they are focusing on
threats they believe the CCP poses to U.S. national security. They’ll hold a
series of hearings in the coming days about the Chinese regime’s use of spy
balloons, its stance toward the Russia–Ukraine conflict, its perceived
belligerent behavior toward Taiwan, and the Chinese-owned social media app
TikTok.
