Their investigative work will not finally begin until mid-week. Experts from the World Health Organization (WHO), expected in China last week to investigate the origin of Covid-19, will not finally be able to begin their mission until Thursday, January 14. The announcement was made on Monday by the Chinese Ministry of Health. Due to a lack of necessary permits, the team of global experts was unable to arrive on site on the originally scheduled date. A last minute cancellation while, for Beijing, this visit is very sensitive. China is indeed anxious to avoid any responsibility in the global epidemic which has now lasted a year, and has resulted in the death of 1.9 million people around the world.
“After discussions, the WHO expert team […] will travel to China from January 14 for inspections. They will conduct joint research with Chinese scientists on the origins of Covid-19, ”the Ministry of Health said in a brief statement. Beijing did not provide details on how the visit would go, but investigators are expected to be quarantined upon arrival on Chinese soil. In a rare criticism of China, the head of the WHO regretted last week that his investigators were unable to visit the country.
A year ago, the first death from Covid-19 in China
The Chinese green light comes one year to the day after the announcement of the first death in China of what was still at the time a mysterious virus. The country has since succeeded in virtually eradicating the disease from its soil. The authorities do not miss an opportunity to cast doubts on the Chinese origin of the virus, when they had initially blamed a market in Wuhan where live animals were sold.
But Beijing has not been able to prevent US President Donald Trump from regularly accusing him of having spread “the Chinese virus” on the planet, or even of having let it escape from a virology laboratory in Wuhan, the city in the center of the country where the virus appeared at the end of 2019. A sign of nervousness, the communist authorities sentenced to four years in prison a citizen journalist, Zhang Zhan, who had covered the quarantine of Wuhan at the end of December.
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