WHO team leader backs off on ruling out Wuhan lab leak

The World Health Organization team leader who first appeared to rule out the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis has now backed off, saying it remains under consideration and will be reviewed further.

Peter Ben Embarek said last week that the possibility that the coronavirus may have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology didn’t merit further inquiry. Days later, however, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reversed that by saying more study was needed, and Embarek seemed to echo that on Monday.

“We also decided and agreed that all the hypotheses would be reviewed on a regular basis based on advanced knowledge from our new studies and from evidence that could come up in the coming weeks and months. So, that’s the context under which these hypotheses and the others were designed and used, and of course, they are all still under consideration,” Embarek said on Monday. “In particular, none of them were considered as impossible hypotheses. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have even considered them. So, they are on the table.”

Tedros said last week that “some questions have been raised as to whether some hypotheses have been discarded. I want to clarify that all hypotheses remain open and require further study.”

China has done its utmost to thwart investigations into the origins of the virus. The Trump administration withdrew from the WHO in 2020, claiming that the U.N. agency was incompetent and influenced by China, although the Biden administration rejoined. A WHO joint investigation with Chinese officials was conducted in January and February.

Embarek, head of the visiting WHO team in Wuhan, announced last week that the WHO considered four main hypotheses: direct transmission from an animal species to humans, transmission through an intermediate species, transmission through frozen foods, and a “laboratory-related incident.”

He said a jump from an animal to another animal to humans was most likely and claimed an accidental release from a Wuhan lab was extremely unlikely, saying that it “is not a hypothesis that implies to suggest future studies into our work to support our future work into the understanding of the origin of the virus.” Tedros reversed at least part of that conclusion on Thursday, saying the theory needed further study.

During the Monday press conference, Embarek confirmed that there was “substantial circulation [of the coronavirus] already in December, particularly in the second half of December 2019 in Wuhan.”

Embarek elaborated during an interview with Science.

“The fact that we assessed this hypothesis as extremely unlikely doesn’t mean it’s ruled out. … We also state in the report that all these hypothesis assessments will be reviewed on a regular basis. We may pick that one up again if new evidence comes up to make it more likely. It’s work in progress,” Embarek said, adding that he had ruled out a much-touted Chinese government theory that the coronavirus may have originated through the import of frozen food, saying, “We have to separate the situation in 2020 with imported goods in China, and the situation in 2019, where that was not a possible route of introduction.”

The China-WHO conclusions last week were initially met with skepticism from the Biden administration. State Department spokesman Ned Price responded to the WHO findings by saying, “I wouldn’t want to be conclusive yet before we’ve seen the report” and that the department would be drawing “on information collected and analyzed by our own intelligence community.”

The China-WHO report on its origins investigation has not yet been released. Embarek repeatedly said on Monday that it would be a “consensus” report with “joint” key findings, but WHO leadership seemed to push back on this.

Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s Emergencies Program, stressed on Monday that “achieving an absolute consensus around every point is almost an impossibility in science.” He pointed out that “there were different components to this, components around the environment, around animals, around labs, around the clinical, around the epidemiologic, so it’s a complex interweaving.” Tedros went further, saying consensus was neither possible nor desirable.

“Reaching a consensus on everything may be difficult, and it will not be possible, especially when you’re, you know, just starting. So, we would expect that. … There may not be consensus on all issues, and there should not be consensus on all issues, actually,” Tedros said. “So, when the team faces that, the solution is they can represent or indicate their differences in the report. And that can help also in proposing future studies, so that’s what should be done. A joint report doesn’t mean that you’ll have consensus on everything.”

The WHO leader also seemed to distance the WHO from what has been dubbed a China-WHO joint inquiry, saying that “except two actually in the group, the rest, ten, of the members or experts are actually from different institutions, not WHO.”

Tedros said the WHO team was “independent” and that “many times, I hear that this is a WHO study or investigation. It’s not. It’s an independent study.”

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