June 30 \u2013 The World Health Organization (WHO) says the search for the origin of COVID-19 remains incomplete, with critical information still withheld. WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged countries, particularly China, to share data openly to prevent future pandemics.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll hypotheses remain on the table,\u201d Tedros said on Friday, following the release of a final report by the WHO\u2019s Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), which admitted that efforts to determine how the virus emerged had reached no definitive conclusion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe continue to appeal to China and any other country that has information about the origins of COVID-19 to share that information openly, in the interests of protecting the world,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
COVID-19, which erupted in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, has killed at least 20 million people and caused global economic losses exceeding $10 trillion. Tedros called it a \u201cmoral imperative\u201d to uncover the origins of the virus, known scientifically as SARS-CoV-2.<\/p>\n
SAGO chair Marietjie Venter said most evidence still points to a zoonotic spillover\u2014where the virus jumped from animals to humans, potentially through an intermediate host. However, she acknowledged that lack of cooperation, particularly from China, had stymied any investigation into whether the outbreak might have resulted from a laboratory accident.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite repeated requests, we were not given the data needed to assess that possibility. It remains speculative but cannot be excluded,\u201d she said, stressing that no scientific evidence has been found to support claims of virus manipulation in a lab.<\/p>\n
Venter added there was no indication of virus transmission outside China before December 2019, reinforcing the belief that Wuhan was the epicentre of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
A previous WHO-China joint study in early 2021 concluded that the virus most likely originated from bats, transmitted to humans via another animal. However, the investigation was widely criticised for lacking transparency and failing to rigorously pursue the lab-leak hypothesis.<\/p>\n
As the world continues to grapple with the legacy of COVID-19, the UK\u2019s official public inquiry today begins examining one of the pandemic\u2019s most painful chapters\u2014its devastating impact on care homes.<\/p>\n
Bereaved families have long awaited the chance to question why nearly 46,000 care home residents in England and Wales died with COVID-19 between March 2020 and January 2022, many in the early weeks of the outbreak.<\/p>\n
Among the key concerns is the government\u2019s decision in March 2020 to discharge hospital patients into care homes without testing, a move some relatives say seeded infections that spread rapidly in vulnerable populations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were no protocols, no testing. The NHS discharged patients as normal, but we were in a pandemic,\u201d said Maureen Lewis, manager of St Ives Lodge, a care home in northeast London. She described how six residents died within one week in April 2020, soon after a hospitalised resident returned with COVID symptoms.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were like a mini hospital, Googling what to do,\u201d she said, recalling how doctors and nurses refused to enter the facility and protective gear was in short supply.<\/p>\n
Lewis slammed former Health Secretary Matt Hancock for claiming in May 2020 that the government had thrown a \u201cprotective ring\u201d around care homes. \u201cThere was no ring of protection,\u201d she said. \u201cHe must be held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Families and care home staff are also demanding answers on the controversial use of blanket \u201cDo Not Resuscitate\u201d orders and restrictive visiting policies that left many residents to die alone.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
June 30 \u2013 The World Health Organization (WHO) says the search for the origin of COVID-19 remains incomplete, with critical information still withheld. WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged countries, particularly China, to share data openly to prevent future pandemics. \u201cAll hypotheses remain on the table,\u201d Tedros said on Friday, following the release of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}