'Release Covid data', WHO tells China on five year 'milestone' of deadly outbreak

31 December 2024, 10:05

The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged China to share Covid data and allow access so scientists can understand its origins five years on from the outbreak of the deadly virus.

The UN health agency said the information is vital for ensuring the world can better prepare for future epidemics and avoid the catastrophe sparked by the spread of coronavirus, which killed more than seven million people globally.

The WHO said in a statement: “We continue to call on China to share data and access so we can understand the origins of Covid-19. This is a moral and scientific imperative.

“We continue to call on China to share data and access so we can understand the origins of Covid-19. This is a moral and scientific imperative.”

On December 31 2019, the WHO’s country office in China received a media statement from health authorities in Wuhan alarming cases of “viral pneumonia”.

“In the weeks, months and years that unfolded after that, Covid-19 came to shape our lives and our world,” the WHO said.

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It added: “As we mark this milestone, let’s take a moment to honour the lives changed and lost, recognise those who are suffering from Covid-19 and Long Covid, express gratitude to the health workers who sacrificed so much to care for us, and commit to learning from Covid-19 to build a healthier tomorrow.”

Beijing hit back on Tuesday, claiming it had already shared information on Covid “without holding anything back.”

China’s Foreign ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, said: “Five years ago...China immediately shared epidemic information and viral gene sequence with the WHO and the international community.

“Without holding anything back, we shared our prevention, control and treatment experience, making a huge contribution to the international community’s pandemic-fighting work.”

The WHO has frequently accused Chinese authorities of refusing to cooperate and lacking transparency on Covid.

WHO officials say they have repeatedly asked for additional data, with specialist teams being refused entry back into Wuhan after a team of WHO specialists accompanied by Chinese colleagues launched an investigation into the origins of the virus.  

Ms Mao claimed on Tuesday that "more and more clues" pointed "to Covid-19's origins having a global scope".She said China was "willing to continue working with various parties to promote global scientific origin tracing, and to make active efforts to prevent potential infectious diseases in the future".

 The WHO’s 2021 investigation found that the most likely explanation for Covid’s origins was that the virus was zoonotic, meaning it had been transmitted by an intermediary animal. 

But some have theorised the coronavirus could have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

 Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, told LBC in 2021 that while "it's possible" the virus jumped to humans from nature,  the “fact that... it's far more likely, if you're a scientist, that it was put together.”

“It's a natural virus that's been, as it were, mucked around with and the characteristics of things like the spike protein, which make it so highly infectious, also point in the direction of it being somewhat tailored."

But in 2024, a team of scientists said it was “beyond reasonable doubt” that the pandemic was triggered by an infected animal at a wet market in Wuhan.