WHA treaty likely to make it legally binding on nations to prevent future pandemic outbreak

New Delhi, May 24: As the demands grow for a fuller probe into the origins of COVID-19, the World Health Assembly will be meeting today to pass a resolution on setting up of an inter-governmental working group.

The WHA will meet under the presidentship of Bhutan and it may consider a global pandemic treaty to make it legally binding on nations to prevent any future pandemic outbreak.

The meeting comes at a time when the Wall Street Journal reported that three researchers of the Wuhan Institute in China became sick and had to be admitted to hospital.

Three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) sought hospital care in November 2019, months before Beijing reported first case of COVID-19, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, further fuelling the debate over the origins of the pandemic.

The reports provides fresh details on the number of researchers affected, the timing of their illnesses, and their hospital visits. It may also add weight to calls for a broader probe of whether the COVID-19 virus could have escaped from the laboratory.