WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus asks China to share data to probe origins of COVID-19

WHO has continued to call on China to share the data to find the origins of COVID-19.

Geneva, Dec 15: Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of World Health Organization (WHO), on Wednesday, asked China to share the requested data concerning Covid-19 to find the origins of the virus.

"We continue to call on China to share the data and conduct the studies that we have requested, to better understand the origins of this virus," the WHO chief told a media briefing, as quoted in a statement on the organization's website.

There are two dominant theories put forwarded by experts on the origins of the virus. According to the theory number one, SARS-CoV-2 is the result of a natural zoonotic spillover. Whereas as per the second theory, the virus infected humans as a consequence of a research-related incident.

Tedros hopes that the COVID-19 pandemic will no longer be considered a global health emergency next year. "We're hopeful that at some point next year, we will be able to say that COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency," the WHO chief said.

He then remembered talking about the Omicron variant last year when it was just identified and was starting to take off." "At that time, COVID-19 was killing 50,000 people each week. Last week, less than 10,000 people lost their lives globally. That's still 10,000 too many - and there is still a lot that all countries can do to save lives - but we have come a long way," he added.

The WHO chief said the criteria for declaring an end to the emergency will be discussed during the next meeting of the Emergency Committee in January. He added that the virus "will not go away," but all countries "will need to learn to manage it alongside other respiratory illnesses including influenza and RSV, both of which are now circulating intensely in many countries."

The novel virus was first identified in an outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. Attempts to contain the virus failed and it spread to other areas of Asia and later worldwide. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern and a pandemic on 11 March 2020. As of 11 December 2022, 649 million cases have been reported with 6.65 million confirmed deaths worldwide, making it one of the deadliest in history.