WHO head ‘disappointed’ China is blocking entry of COVID-19 investigative team

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) is pressuring Beijing to allow an international team to investigate the origins of the coronavirus in China after he said they are being blocked from entering the country.

“Today we learned that Chinese officials have not yet finalized the necessary permissions for the team’s arrival in China,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news briefing on Tuesday. “I am very disappointed with this news, given that two members had already begun their journeys and others were not able to travel at the last minute.”

He also said he has been in contact with Chinese officials and has “been assured that China is speeding up the internal procedure for the earliest possible deployment.”

President Trump has attacked the WHO for not being tough enough on China, where the coronavirus was first detected. The exact way in which the outbreak began in China remains unclear.

A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it is still working out the “necessary procedures” with the WHO, according to CNN.

“In order to ensure that the international expert group that comes to China can work smoothly, it is needed to fulfill the necessary procedures and make relevant specific arrangements,” said the spokesperson, Hua Chunying. “The two sides are still negotiating about this.”

Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist who is part of the investigative team, told CNN the experts need to learn how the outbreak developed in China because there is “no country that doesn’t have risk of disease emergence.”

“It’s something we need to understand, so the whole world can prepare,” she said.