Countries urge deeper probe of Covid origins

Geneva: The United States and other countries called on Tuesday for a more in-depth investigation into the Covid-19 pandemic’s origins, after an international mission to China earlier this year proved inconclusive.

Addressing the World Health Organisation’s main annual meeting of member states, representatives from several countries stressed the continued need to solve the mystery of how Covid-19 first began spreading among humans.

"We underscore the importance of a robust comprehensive and expert-led inquiry into the origins of Covid-19," US representative Jeremy Konyndyk told the World Health Assembly (WHA).

The European Union, Australia and Japan were among others to call for more progress on the investigation, while the British representative urged for any probe to be "timely, expert-driven and grounded in robust science".

Determining how the virus that causes Covid-19 began spreading is seen as vital to preventing future pandemics. But a long-delayed report by the team of international experts sent to Wuhan and their Chinese counterparts drew no firm conclusions on the origins of the pandemic.

Instead, they ranked a number of hypotheses according to how likely they believed they were. The report said the virus jumping from bats to humans via an intermediate animal was the most probable scenario, while it said a theory involving the virus leaking from a laboratory was "extremely unlikely".

After the report was released, however, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted all theories remained on the table.