Why Is Covid’s Origin Still a Mystery? WHO Urges China to Provide Data

Five years after the epidemic began in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the WHO has called on China to disclose data to assist investigate the origins of COVID-19. Wuhan health officials reported a cluster of “pneumonia” illnesses to the WHO’s China headquarters on December 31st 2019.

The 11 million person city was placed under lockdown by Chinese authorities more than three weeks later. The country was terrified of a virus that would spread quickly but as officials would later discover, the coronavirus had already gone well outside of China. 

The origin of a virus that killed at least seven million people, destroyed health care systems and rocked the world economy is still a mystery even after much of the world has moved past the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions. Many analysts also claim that China’s secrecy has made it more difficult to determine the roots of the pandemic.

“We continue to call on China to share data and access so we can understand the origins of COVID-19. This is a moral and scientific imperative,” the WHO said in a statement on Monday. “Without transparency, sharing, and cooperation among countries, the world cannot adequately prevent and prepare for future epidemics and pandemics,” it added.

The origin of the pandemic has been the focus of intense scientific investigation and heated political discussions, with differing views mostly about whether it resulted from a lab leak or a natural animal spill.

Although they haven’t been able to pinpoint the intermediate host, many scientists think the virus started in the wild before spreading from sick animals to people and through a Wuhan wet market.

Initially written off as a conspiracy idea, suspicions that the coronavirus was spilled from a lab close to the market have remained and even been supported by some researchers. 

From the beginning, the hunt for the virus’s origins has been extremely contentious and a major cause of political unrest. Beijing has strongly refuted the accusations made by the United States and other Western nations that it has restricted access to original and comprehensive data.

China’s strict restriction over data access has also drawn criticism from WHO officials, who in 2023 described China’s lack of data disclosure as “simply inexcusable.” In response, Chinese disease control officials stated at the time that China had given the WHO’s expert group all of the information it possessed regarding the virus’s origins “without withholding any cases, samples or their testing and analysis results.”

The international health organization has been requesting access to test results from market employees for years along with other unprocessed data that China gathered at the beginning of the outbreak.

WHO did not get access to some of the data collected by Chinese scientists at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in early 2020 until 2023, three years after the epidemic began. The sample’s raw genetic sequences had been posted to the GISAID data sharing website. Though they were quickly taken down, astute researchers had already spotted them and downloaded them for more research.

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Coronavirus susceptible animals and the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 were found at a particular area of the market, according to an analysis of that material published in the peer reviewed journal Cell in September. However, the study did not verify whether the animals were infected with the virus.

The WHO said in a statement on Monday that on December 31st 2019, its country office in China retrieved a statement about “viral pneumonia” cases in Wuhan from the website of the Wuhan municipal health commission. “In the weeks, months and years that unfolded after that, COVID-19 came to shape our lives and our world,” it said.

“As we mark this milestone, let’s take a moment to honour the lives changed and lost, recognize those who are suffering from COVID-19 and long COVID, express gratitude to the health workers who sacrificed so much to care for us, and commit to learning from COVID-19 to build a healthier tomorrow.”