US did not provide access to data that accuse China of Covid-19: WHO
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Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses Lead at the WHO says that even after the organization requested information from US agencies and from the Department of energy, they still did not receive anything.
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This 2020 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows SARS-CoV-2 virus particles, which cause COVID-19 (AP)
The United States did not give the World Health Organization (WHO) access to reports or data that accuse a Chinese laboratory of causing Covid-19, Emerging Diseases, and Zoonoses Lead at the WHO Health Emergencies Programme Maria Van Kerkhove said on Friday.
Read: How COVID Was Politicized in the West
"We have made requests to senior mission officials here in Geneva of the US mission for information from the latest reports from the Department of Energy, as well as additional reports from other US agencies. We have also reached out to HHS [United States Department of Health and Human Services]... As of right now, we do not have access to those reports or to the data that was underlying in how those reports were generated," Van Kerkhove said.
All countries, institutions, and organizations are encouraged to share with the WHO any data available regarding the origin of the Covid-19 virus, she stressed.
Read: China Studies Blood Bank Samples for COVID-19 Origins Probe
Many scientists believe the animal-to-human theory of the coronavirus is a reasonable one and theorize it started in the wild and jumped to humans from bats.
In a 2021 research paper in the journal Cell, scientists said that Covid-19 was the ninth documented coronavirus to infect humans, and all the previous ones had animals as origins.
The journal Science published last year two studies that bolstered the animal origin theory. Scientists concluded that likely, the virus spilled from animals into people two separate times.
This comes after the WHO stated, in its fast risk assessment analysis issued in January, that variants of the XBB.1.5 belonged to the categories of the most immune-evasive Omicron subvariants. Although the WHO stated that it did not possess any mutation known to raise severity, the assessment of illness severity is still ongoing.
It is worth noting that the Covid pandemic caused a surge of deaths in the US between 2019 and 2020, ushering in the largest spike in mortality in 100 years.
Deaths in the US increased by 19% between the pre-Covid era and 2020. Deaths also remained high in 2021 as the threat of the pandemic continued, according to the US Census Bureau's estimates.
Mortality patterns have been predictable prior to the pandemic, following seasonal trends and peaking in the winter months. But over the past two years, the Coronavirus has disrupted these patterns, and it's unclear whether or if the pre-pandemic patterns will return.
The Census Bureau said that deaths spiked by almost 19% between 2019 and 2020, from 2,854,828 to 3,390,029 in the US. Deaths in the US had until the pandemic been following a general linear increase.
