White House cites 'deep concerns' about WHO COVID report, demands early data from China

The White House on Saturday asked China to make available data from the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak, saying it has “deep concerns” about how the findings of the World Organization’s COVID-19 report were communicated. health.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement that it is imperative that the report be independent and free from “disruption by the Chinese government,” echoing concerns raised by the former president’s administration. Donald Trump, who also decided to resign from the WHO. about the topic.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy responded with a forceful statement, saying that the United States had damaged multilateral cooperation and the WHO in recent years, and should not “point the finger” at China and other countries that supported the WHO during COVID. -19 pandemic.

China welcomed the US decision to reengage with the WHO, but Washington should adhere to “higher standards” rather than target other countries, the spokesman said.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that all hypotheses were open about the origins of COVID-19, after Washington said it wanted to review data from a WHO-led mission to China, where it emerged. the virus for the first time.

A WHO-led mission, which spent four weeks in China investigating the origins of the COVID-19 outbreak, said this week that it was not investigating further the question of whether the virus escaped from a laboratory, which it deemed highly unlikely.

The Trump administration had said it suspected the virus may have escaped from a Chinese laboratory, which Beijing flatly denies.

Sullivan noted that US President Joe Biden had quickly reversed the decision to disengage from the WHO, but said it was imperative to protect the organization’s credibility.

“Re-engaging WHO also means keeping it to the highest standards,” Sullivan said. “We have deep concerns about the way the first COVID-19 research findings were communicated and questions about the process used to reach them.”

Biden, who is spending his first weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, will meet with his national security advisers on Saturday, a White House official said.

China declined to provide raw data on early COVID-19 cases to the WHO-led team investigating the origins of the pandemic, according to one of the team’s researchers, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began. .

The team had requested raw patient data on 174 cases that China had identified since the initial phase of the outbreak in the city of Wuhan in December 2019, as well as other cases, but were only provided with a summary, Dominic Dwyer, a contagious Australian. disease expert and member of the WHO team, he told Reuters.

“It is imperative that this report be independent, with expert findings free from intervention or alteration by the Chinese government,” Sullivan said.

“To better understand this pandemic and prepare for the next one, China must make its data available from the first days of the outbreak,” he said.

The embassy statement did not address the data issue.

WHO did not respond to inquiries for comment.

Going forward, all countries, including China, must engage in a robust and transparent process to prevent and respond to health emergencies, Sullivan said.

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