The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, assured today that said entity continues to investigate the origin of covid-19 in China, after the progress of these studies has been called into question in recent days.
"The reason why we have to understand the origin of this disease It is a scientific question, but also a moral one."said the Ethiopian expert, who guaranteed that the work of the WHO in the Asian country will continue in the future.
From the scientific side, Tedros referred to the importance of finding the origin of the first covid-19 outbreak in order to avoid future pandemics with characteristics similar to this one.
On the moral level, Tedros recalled the millions of deaths caused by the disease in the last three years and the fact that the world "he looked handcuffed" due to the effects of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
In this sense, the technical leader of the organization for the covid-19 pandemic, Maria Van Kerkhove, spoke, who considered "confused" an information published this week by the magazine Nature in which it was said that the investigation on the origin of the virus was "archived"quoting herself.
Van Kerkhove specified that his statements only referred to a slowdown in the second phase of these studies and urged the Chinese authorities to increase their efforts to collaborate with the WHO and to carry out their own investigations on the ground.
"We ask that all political overtones be removed from this issue"said the expert, who recalled that as time progresses, it becomes more difficult to identify the origin of the pandemic.
