The World Health Organization is criticizing China for withholding information on the origins of the coronavirus after pulling data offline

the Global Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) has targeted Chinese officials for withholding information that could shed light on the origin of COVID-19.

The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr. said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday, according to a report from The New York Times.

Ghebreyesus’ comments come later Chinese data That first became available in January was abruptly shut down after researchers offered to collaborate with Chinese scientists to analyze the data.

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Before the data suddenly disappeared, a team of international virus experts managed to download it and begin analyzing it. According to the researchers, the new information pointed to the idea that the epidemic may have started in a seafood market in Wuhan, where illegally traded raccoon dogs infected humans with the virus.

Researchers He said the data shows that raccoon dogs, which are known to spread coronaviruses, left behind DNA in the same area of ​​the Wuhan market where genetic signatures of the pandemic-causing coronavirus were discovered.

“There’s a good chance that the animals that deposited this DNA also deposited the virus,” Stephen Goldstein, a University of Utah virologist who helped analyze the data, told the Associated Press. “If you were to go and do environmental sampling in the aftermath of a zoonotic event…that’s exactly what you would expect to find.”

Members of a World Health Organization team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus disease arrive at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. (Reuters/Thomas Peter/File)

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But the discovery would contradict the explanations of Chinese officials, who insisted that the samples tested were positive Corona virus In the market it was brought by patients, not animals.

“It is very unlikely that we would see this much animal DNA, especially raccoon dog DNA, mixed with viral samples, if most of it was human contamination,” Sarah Coby, an epidemiologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, told the New York Times. times.

Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

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Access to the data could finally help shed light on the origin of the pandemic, a mystery that has led to many plausible explanations but no definitive answer. Ghebreyesus called on China to be transparent about the information, saying the missing evidence “needs the immediate involvement of the international community.”