There are growing calls for an independent, transparent investigation into the emergence of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 outbreak.
Australia on Thursday was the latest to join the outcry, with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison saying that Canberra would push for such a probe at the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, next month.
Morrison said that his government wants the WHO’s investigatory powers to be boosted by empowering a special team to enter a country when there is a health emergency, much in the way that the UN’s nuclear and chemical weapons watchdogs can send in inspectors in a time of crisis.
Both proposals are valid.
However, it is just as crucial that the demand for an investigation be clearly separated from the grandstanding by some world leaders, such as the US president, for their own political ends on the one side and China’s need to prop up the image of the infallibility of the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the other by labeling the calls for an inquiry a “smear campaign.”
Chinese scientists and international experts not associated with the WHO must begin such a probe as soon as possible, because unfortunately Beijing’s and the WHO’s actions to date have so badly damaged their reputations that no one is going to believe what they say alone or together without independent verification.
Beijing’s announcement last month that any research or academic papers on the outbreak would require special vetting was its latest own-goal and will do nothing to stop the conspiracy theories about the virus’ origin that are already spinning out of control.
It is equally important that such a probe be separated from the threats of legal actions and calls for China to pay reparations, or threats to cut off funding to the WHO and demands for WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to be replaced, which could hog-tie scientists’ efforts to understand the virus and its mutations.
Some nations, such as the UK and France, have said that they do not believe the time is right for such a probe, while Tedros has said that his agency would carry out an “after action” review once the crisis is over.
Far too many lives have been lost already and too many more are at risk in the coming months, if not years — not to mention the massive damage to economies worldwide — to delay an investigation.
With each passing week, a little more has been learned about the outbreak: That the coronavirus might have emerged in Wuhan, China, in November last year or even earlier; that more than 232,000 people might have been infected in the first wave in China, four times the official figures; that the death toll in Wuhan was 50 percent higher than first reported; that the first COVID-19 fatality in the US died on Feb. 6, far earlier than US officials had believed; that the virus began spreading in New York state by the middle of February, brought by people arriving from Europe, which meant it was already circulating widely in Italy and other EU nations before then; and that the definition of a confirmed COVID-19 case has broadened to people who are asymptomatic.
A truly transparent inquiry is essential to learning not only how to treat COVID-19, but to aid the development of potential vaccines and ways to prevent future outbreaks.
The world needs answers to those questions now. The blame game can wait. We have to be able to look backward to move ahead.
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