
WHO continues to call on China to share data five years after COVID-19
WHO continues to call on China to share data five years after COVID-19
WHO continues to call on China to share data five years after COVID-19The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly urged China to make critical information about the origins of Covid publicly available, nearly five years after the virus first emerged in that country.In a statement released by The Telegraph, Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's emergency response programme manager, stated: "As a global community we have been calling for this data since day one. It is still not complete and it shouldn't take us five years to get it."The lack of information comes as the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc around the world. As per The Telegraph, there have been more than 600 million confirmed cases and at least 6.5 million people have died since Covid-19 was first identified in China in December 2019.The WHO has repeatedly called for access to raw data from the early days of the pandemic, but Chinese officials have reportedly resisted such demands.According to The Telegraph, Peter Ben Embarek, director of WHO's emergencies programme, said: "We are still looking at data that is available. We hope we can move forward and get the information we need."Despite China's apparent reluctance to share information, some experts believe it may be more difficult than originally thought to determine the origins of the virus.According to The Telegraph, Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at the University of Warwick, said: "It is extremely challenging and time-consuming work. It requires careful collection of clinical samples and thorough testing in well-equipped laboratories."The search for Covid's origins has been hampered by political tensions between China and the West. As per The Telegraph, some scientists have called on the WHO to conduct an independent investigation into how the virus emerged.The WHO has acknowledged that the search for the origins of Covid is ongoing but has not yet provided a timeline for when a conclusion might be reached.