London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

WHO chief angrily denies it has ‘quietly shelved’ investigation into Covid’s origins

WHO chief angrily denies it has ‘quietly shelved’ investigation into Covid’s origins

The World Health Organization will continue pushing until it finds an answer to how the Covid-19 pandemic started, the agency's chief said Wednesday following a report suggesting it had abandoned the search.
"We need to continue to push until we get the answer," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters, referring to the search for the origins of the virus that first surfaced in China in late 2019.

Solving the mystery of where the SARS CoV-2 virus came from and how it began spreading among humans is viewed as vital to averting future pandemics.

The two main theories that have been hotly debated have centred on the virus naturally spilling over from bats to an intermediary animal and into humans, or escaping due to a lab accident.

But an article on the Nature website Tuesday suggested that the WHO has "quietly shelved the second phase of its much-anticipated scientific investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic".

It quoted Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO expert leading the agency's Covid response, saying that "there is no phase two".

The WHO planned for work to be done in phases, she told the report, but "that plan has changed", adding that "The politics across the world of this really hampered progress on understanding the origins".

Van Kerkhove responded angrily Wednesday when asked about the article, attributing the interpretation that WHO had shelved its origins search to "an error in reporting, which is really quite concerning because it's causing some headlines that are inaccurate".

"WHO has not abandoned studying the origins of Covid-19, we have not and we will not," she said.

The WHO carried out a first phase of investigation by sending a team of international experts to Wuhan, China, in January 2021 to produce a first phase report, written in conjunction with their Chinese counterparts.

While the initial plan had been to send a second team, Van Kerkhove said the WHO had shifted tactics and decided instead to create a team of scientists with an expanded scope to investigate new pathogens and study how to prevent future pandemics, while continuing to probe Covid-19's origins.

The Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) was created "to conduct an independent assessment of the origins of Covid-19, but also to work more broadly to establish a framework to understand the origins of any future epidemic and pandemic pathogen, and the origins in which it emerges," Van Kerkhove said.

"We will continue to ask for countries to depoliticise this work, but we need cooperation from our colleagues in China to advance this," she said.

Tedros said there were two reasons for not abandoning the origins search.

The first was scientific, he said: "We need to know how this started in order to prevent the next one."

"The second (is) moral: millions of people lost their lives, and many suffered, and the whole world was taken hostage by a virus."

"It's morally very important to know how we lost our loved ones."
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×