WHO says China should provide raw data on pandemic's origins

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursdaythat investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic inChinawere being hampered by the lack of raw data on the first days of spread there and urged it to be more transparent.

A WHO-led team spent four weeks in and around the central city of Wuhan with Chinese researchers and said in a joint report in March that the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal.

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It said that "introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway", but countries including the United States and some scientists were not satisfied.

"We askChinato be transparent and open and to cooperate," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference on Thursday.

"We owe it to the millions who suffered and the millions who died to know what happened," he said.

Chinahas called the theory that the virus may have escaped from a Wuhan laboratory "absurd" and said repeatedly that "politicizing" the issue will hamper investigations.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn, who held talks with Tedros on Thursday, urgedChinato enable investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic to continue, saying more information was needed.

Tedros will brief WHO's 194 member states on Fridayregarding a proposed second phase of study, WHO's top emergency expert Mike Ryan said.

"We look forward to working with our Chinese counterparts on that process and the director-general will outline measures to member states at a meeting tomorrow, on Friday," he told reporters.

Spahn, who was speaking during a visit to the WHO headquarters in Geneva, also announced a 260 million euro ($307 million) donation to WHO's ACT-Accelerator programme, which aims to ensure the entire world, including poorer countries, receive COVID-19 vaccines and tests.

The UN health agency has been facing intensifying pressure for a new, more in-depth investigation of Covid-19's origins.

The WHO only managed to send a team of independent, international experts to Wuhan in January, more than a year after Covid-19 first surfaced there in late 2019, to help probe the pandemic origins.

But in their long-delayed report published in late March, the international team and their Chinese counterparts drew no firm conclusions, instead ranking a number of hypotheses according to how likely they believed they were.

The report said the virus jumping from bats to humans via an intermediate animal was the most probable scenario, while a theory involving the virus leaking from a laboratory was "extremely unlikely".

The investigation and report have faced criticism for lacking transparency and access, and for not evaluating the lab-leak theory more deeply -- a mere 440 words of the report were dedicated to discussing and dismissing it.

Long dismissed as a right-wing conspiracy theory, and vehemently rejected by Beijing, the idea that Covid-19 may have emerged from a lab leak has been gaining increasing momentum in the United States especially.

(With inputs from agencies)