The US administration intends to carefully study the conclusions of the World Health Organization (WHO) mission following its work in Wuhan, China. This was announced by the press secretary of the White House Jen Psaki on Tuesday, February 9.
The US administration was not involved in the “planning and execution” of the investigation and wants to conduct an independent review of its findings and background, she said. At the same time, Psaki did not comment on the commission’s conclusion, according to which the version of the laboratory origin of the coronavirus is “extremely unlikely,” writes Reuters.
The spokeswoman recalled that the United States continues to insist on obtaining access by its specialists to areas and facilities of interest in the PRC. Despite the fact that the administration has returned to the World Health Organization, “we need to have our own team of experts on the ground.”
WHO specialists arrived in the Chinese city of Wuhan on 14 January. According to the current rules of the PRC, the experts were in quarantine for two weeks. During this time, they consulted with Chinese video communication specialists.
After going through mandatory quarantine, on January 31, a WHO team studying the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic visited a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
On February 7, experts announced the first results of their work, noting that they had found “important clues” on the market that would help in further investigation.
On February 9, an expert of the World Health Organization group from the Russian Federation, deputy director of the Pasteur Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Vladimir Dedkov, told Izvestia that the WHO commission would conduct the second stage of the investigation in Wuhan. He noted that a total of 17 scientists from the commission and 17 specialists from China took part in the work of the WHO commission in China.