The World Health Organization struck an agreement with China in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic to allow the communist nation to investigate the origins of the virus, which may have jeopardized the best chance of figuring out what really happened.
The New York Times published a lengthy report Monday that outlined what took place as the WHO was attempting to track down the original source of COVID-19. It's believed that the pandemic started in Wuhan, China, and was somehow transferred from an animal to a human.
Roughly nine months after WHO officials were on the ground in Beijing to begin investigating how the virus first infected humans, around 47 million people have been sickened and 1.2 million have died.
China would not allow the WHO to conduct its own probe and instead struck a deal to use its own people to investigate. To date, no independent investigation has taken place, according to the Times, in an attempt to unravel the mystery of COVID-19.
China did recently approve a plan to use outside investigators to study SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. But as part of the deal, the WHO is allowing Chinese scientists to take the lead on the crucial parts of the probe that involve how it spread at a seafood market in Wuhan.
"Unfortunately, this has become a political investigation," Australian virologist Wang Linfa told the Times. "Whatever [China does] is symbolic."
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, "Divisions between and within countries have provided fertile ground for this fast-moving virus to grow and gain the upper hand."
China's initial investigation at the Wuhan seafood market is full of questions and holes. And there is evidence, according to the Times, that the virus may have passed from bats to another animal and then to a human and not at the seafood market.
China's actions in not allowing health officials to conduct their own probe, however, may prevent the answers from ever being found.
American and Chinese scientists concluded that the virus may have originated in horseshoe bats. The Trump administration has also floated theories that the virus was created in a lab in Wuhan, a claim the lab says is untrue.
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