WHO Needles China By Asking For More Data On Origin Of COVID-19

The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged China to share raw data from the earliest COVID-19 cases to revive its probe into the origins of the disease, as Russia recorded record deaths, the Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.

Photo Insert: China has so far been tight-lipped concerning data on COVID-19 despite consistent pressure from the WHO and a number of world leaders.

WHO’s plea came as Russia saw its highest daily death toll from the pandemic that has killed at least 4.3 million people worldwide. WHO stressed it was "vitally important" to uncover the origins of the virus first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019.

In the face of pushback from Beijing, the UN health agency called for the provision of "all data and access required so that the next series of studies can be commenced as soon as possible."

A WHO call last month for the investigation's second stage to include audits of the Wuhan labs infuriated Beijing, with vice health minister Zeng Yixin saying the plan showed "disrespect for common sense and arrogance towards science."

After reading the phase one report, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus concluded that the probe into Wuhan's virology labs had not gone far enough.

Meanwhile, Danish scientist Peter Ben Embarek, who led the international mission to Wuhan, said a lab employee infected while taking samples in the field falls under one of the likely hypotheses as to how the virus passed from bats to humans.

He told the Danish public channel TV2 that the suspect bats were not from the Wuhan region and the only people likely to have approached them were workers from the Wuhan labs.

And in signs that the epidemic's economic impact is far from over, China on Thursday announced it was partially closing the world's third-busiest cargo port after a worker tested positive for coronavirus.

Almost 2,000 front-line workers at Ningbo-Zhoushan port have been placed under "closed management" -- effectively unable to leave the port -- as a result of the infection, Chinese media reported.

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