The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) team working with Chinese colleagues to finalize a report on the origins of the coronavirus acknowledged that its authors could face “pressure”, but insisted that the final product will have the unanimous green light of all scientific team members.
Peter Ben Embarek, an expert on food safety and diseases passed from animals to people, said in interviews Wednesday and Thursday that the team expects the report – which is now about 280 pages long and includes charts, dates and annexes – to be ready for release. be published next week.
The report is a first-phase study that is expected to be followed by a more detailed and in-depth examination as part of guidelines set by the Chinese authorities and the WHO team.
Ben Embarek, who led a 10-person international team that visited China in January and February, acknowledged that there has been pressure related to the pandemic.
“We are in the world we live in,” he said. “There may be pressure from right to left.”
“What we can guarantee is that everyone will agree” and support for the report will be “unanimous” once it is completed, said Ben Embarek. The refinement of the text has focused on scientific issues, while some Chinese-English translation issues were “taking a long time,” he said.
He added that the report was being written by the experts and is part of a “long and complex” process.
On Wednesday, the Chinese newspaper Global Times published an interview with Liang Wannian, head of the Chinese side of the team, who spoke of political pressure that he said amounted to “a huge lack of respect for the work of our scientists.”
Liang said that some politicians and the international press had “insisted on politicizing the scientific matter of determining the origin of COVID-19, without considering scientific factors, for their own personal gain, arbitrarily misinterpreting the scientific conclusions and reports of our joint team.”
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