China’s rebuff of the World Health Organization’s planned second phase investigation into the origins of Covid-19 highlights the difficulty it faces in operating amid political pressure from its most powerful members.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last week announced five priorities for further research — but by far the most controversial was the last item on his list: “Audits of relevant laboratories and research institutions operating in the area of the initial human cases identified in December 2019”.
This proposal to investigate the “lab leak” hypothesis – that the virus may have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan – prompted a flat-out rejection from China.