World Health Assembly under lens as demand for fuller probe into China link to Covid-19 grows

Amidst a US intelligence report that advocates a larger probe into the possibility that the Covid-19 virus could have leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, the World Health Assembly is meeting today to pass an anodyne resolution on setting up of an inter-governmental working group to further discuss the submitted three reports investigating the origins of the global pandemic and take further action. The WHA may also consider a global pandemic treaty to plug the gaps found by the three reports and make it legally binding on nations to prevent any future pandemic outbreak.

According to diplomats based in Geneva, not much is expected out of the WHA except for a resolution and asking the WHO instituted group of experts to launch the second phase of investigation into the origins of the virus as the experts in its report had given a clean pass to Wuhan laboratory for possible leakage of the deadly virus. The group of experts had pointed fingers towards a zoonotic origin and possible leakage through food packaging. "Under the Presidentship of Bhutan, the WHA will meet at 10am today (1.30pm IST). Not much is expected from the deliberations despite 1.6 billion people have been affected and 3.4 million people have lost their lives to the disease," said a diplomat.

The WHA meeting comes at a time when Wall Street Journal has reported that three researchers of the China’s Wuhan Institute became so sick that they had to be admitted to the hospital in November 2019. A State Department fact sheet had earlier said that several researchers at the lab developed symptoms "consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness," WSJ reported.

The report further provides fresh details on the number of researchers affected, the timing of their illnesses, and their hospital visits.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the current and former officials familiar with the intelligence about the lab researchers expressed differing views about the strength of the supporting evidence for the assessment.

One person said that it was provided by an international partner and was potentially significant but still in need of further investigation and additional corroboration.

Another person described the intelligence as stronger. "The information that we had coming from the various sources was of exquisite quality. It was very precise. What it didn't tell you was exactly why they got sick," he said, referring to the researchers, according to the report.

The WHO report on the origins of coronavirus was released in March and concluded it is "extremely unlikely that coronavirus, which has killed millions across the world, originated in a lab in China".

The report found that transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario.

"Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover (from animals to humans) both remain viable, more investigation is needed to determine the origins of the pandemic," the letter from the WHO scientists who visited Wuhan in February read.