Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Tuesday slammed the World Health Organization-China report blaming the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic on animal-to-human transmission as a “sham continuation” of the “disinformation campaign” waged by the organization and the Chinese Communist Party.
“The WHO report is a sham continuation of the CCP-WHO disinformation campaign,” Pompeo posted on his Twitter account. “It’s why I recommended we leave WHO. Dr. Tedros collaborated with Xi (Jinping) to hide human to human transmission at a CRITICAL juncture. WIV remains the most likely source of the virus — and WHO is complicit.”
According to the report, officially released on Tuesday, the study’s findings blamed the origins of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 on transmission from animals to humans and said that blaming it on a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as “extremely unlikely.”
Meanwhile, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the organization still is not ruling out any theories on the origin of the virus and that more study is needed.
“As far as WHO is concerned, all hypotheses remain on the table,” Tedros said. “This report is a very important beginning, but it is not the end. We have not yet found the source of the virus, and we must continue to follow the science and leave no stone unturned as we do.”
Tedros also said, in prepared remarks that “scientists would benefit from full access to data including biological samples from at least September 2019” but that in his discussions with the team, “they expressed the difficulties they encountered in accessing raw data. I expect future collaborative studies to include more timely and comprehensive data sharing.”
The report claims that a scenario where the disease spread through an intermediate animal host, including the possibility of a wild animal that was captured and raised on a farm, is “very likely.”
However, the investigation didn’t conclude what the other animal that was infected could have been. A bat is considered most likely to have been the original source of the virus, but the report says the “possible intermediate host of SARS-CoV-2 remains elusive.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also cast doubt on the study, saying in a recent CNN interview that he has “real concerns about the methodology and the process that went into that report, including the fact that the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it.”
Pompeo has been speaking out against the WHO and its connections with China for some time, including before leaving office, when he reportedly allowed China to eavesdrop on a phone call where he alleged the virus came from a leak at the lab.
“We did it on an open phone to ensure the Chinese could hear it,” a source told the Daily Mail. “We were sending a message – we wanted to tell the Chinese.”
Before leaving office, Pompeo put out a statement accompanied by a 15-point fact sheet alleging that “several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019 … with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.”
The sheet also said the WIV had not disclosed its work on SARS-type coronaviruses and had “collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military,” even though it claimed to be a civilian institution.
According to the report, laboratory accidents such as what is being claimed happened at the Wuhan lab are rare. It also noted that there is no record of viruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2 in any laboratory before December 2019 and that the risk of accidentally growing the virus was extremely low.
A joint international team made up of 17 Chinese experts plus 17 experts from other countries, WHO, the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), conducted the investigation and produced the report. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) participated as an observer.
Source: Newmax
