WHO chief pressures China on pandemic origin

doi:10.1126/science.373.6553.378

GSTDTAP > 气候变化

DOI	10.1126/science.373.6553.378
	WHO chief pressures China on pandemic origin
	Jon Cohen
	2021-07-23
发表期刊	Science
出版年	2021
英文摘要	In a sharp tightening of the diplomatic screws, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is urging China to increase its transparency about the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to help resolve the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Tedros also says WHO will create a new body to conduct the next phase of studies into the emergence of the virus, an unexpected move that concerns some scientists, including at least one member of an existing mission the agency organized to study COVID-19's origin. “I'm worried about delays and of course it's a bit strange,” says virologist and veterinarian Marion Koopmans of Erasmus University Medical Center. “We're losing valuable time.” At a press conference on 15 July and in a statement the next day at an information session on the pandemic's origin for WHO members, Tedros called for more aggressively probing the two leading theories of how SARS-CoV-2 first infected humans and then emerged in Wuhan, China, in December 2019: that the virus made a natural “zoonotic” jump from an unknown animal species into humans or, more controversially, that it first infected a human during laboratory or field studies of coronaviruses found in animals. (An even more contentious theory suggests the virus was genetically engineered in a Wuhan lab.) Tedros, who has been accused of being too deferential to Chinese President Xi Jinping, said China has not shared “raw data” from the pandemic's early days and called for “audits of relevant laboratories and research institutions operating in the area of the initial human cases identified in December 2019.” The Wuhan Institute of Virology is world famous for its study of bat coronaviruses, and an outpost of China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention also has a lab in the city that does similar work. Researchers who have been critical of WHO's handling of the origin issue welcome Tedros's tougher tone. “It's a sign that the WHO might be able to do more credible or balanced investigation,” says Alina Chan, a gene therapy researcher at the Broad Institute, who with 17 other scientists co-authored a 14 May letter in Science that argued the lab theory deserves a more balanced assessment. But Chan doubts China will agree to audits of its labs. “Right now, the lack of clarity is in China's interest.” Another author of the Science letter, microbiome researcher David Relman of Stanford University, wished Tedros had owned up to past WHO “missteps.” “I don't think he can simply just take the next step and not worry about what's happened so far.” But other researchers think Tedros has been caught up in what Gerald Keusch, associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory Institute at Boston University, calls “the barrage of media and political commentary”—particularly sharp in the United States, WHO's largest funder—about a potential lab leak. “I think he's under enormous pressure, and he's capitulated,” says Keusch, who co-authored two letters in The Lancet that favor the natural origin theory and criticize the “conspiracy theories” and speculation that fuel some lab-origin arguments. “It's sad.” (Tedros declined an interview request.) Earlier this year, WHO sent a team of international scientists to China to work with colleagues there on a joint mission to study the origin of SARS-CoV-2. The report issued in March by the joint mission, which had just completed the first of two planned phases of studies, declared the lab origin hypothesis “extremely unlikely” and favored the zoonotic theory. That sparked controversy, and even Tedros was chagrined. Last week, he said it was “premature” to discount the lab theory. The next day, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Zhao Lijian pushed back on Tedros's remarks at a press conference, stressing that the joint mission report reached “important conclusions” and suggesting the WHO director was “politicizing the issue.” A “circular” Tedros presented to member states last week spelled out other data the phase 2 studies should attempt to gather, such as testing of captive and wild animals, particularly in regions where SARS-CoV-2 first circulated, and of humans who came in contact with them. Tedros also wants more “studies of animal markets in and around Wuhan”; the joint mission report said it could not verify that live mammals were available at these markets, but a study later showed thousands were sold there. Whether Koopmans and other members of the existing joint mission will help conduct those studies is murky. Tedros said a new WHO International Scientific Advisory Group for Origins of Novel Pathogens “will play a vital role in the next phase of studies into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, as well as the origins of future new pathogens.” WHO will soon make an open call for “highly qualified experts” to apply. Keusch says the current group has highly qualified, diverse experts who worked “diligently” and established important ties to their Chinese colleagues. “I'm very suspicious about dismissing the initial task force and now allowing individuals and governments to nominate themselves.” Relman wonders whether WHO is the best organization to oversee an independent probe into the SARS-CoV-2 origin, given its ongoing need to please donor nations. But he is pleased at its new push for answers. “I really do hope that good science can rule the day,” he says.
领域	气候变化 ; 资源环境
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文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/334426
专题	气候变化资源环境科学
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Jon Cohen. WHO chief pressures China on pandemic origin[J]. Science,2021.
APA	Jon Cohen.(2021).WHO chief pressures China on pandemic origin.Science.
MLA	Jon Cohen."WHO chief pressures China on pandemic origin".Science (2021).