Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic leave the Jade Hotel on a bus after completing quarantine in Wuhan, Hubei Province , in central China, on January 28, 2021.
HECTOR RETAMAL | AFP | Getty Images
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Sunday that he shared his concerns about the level of access to a COVID-19 World Health Organization data search mission in China, echoing of criticism from the United States.
The White House on Saturday called on China to make available data from the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, saying it had “deep concerns” about how the findings of the COVID-19 report were communicated. the WHO.
Asked about the US reaction, Raab told the BBC: “We share the concern for them to get full cooperation and get the answers they need, so we will be pushing for them to have full access and get all the data they need to be able to respond to the questions I think most people want to hear are answered around the outbreak. “
In an interview with the BBC, a member of the WHO delegation in China said that although the Chinese authorities had not given them all the raw data, they had seen a lot of information and discussed the analysis of the first cases. .
“It would be unusual for them to hand over the raw data, but we examined a lot of detailed information in a discussion with their Chinese counterparts,” said John Watson, an epidemiologist who traveled to China as part of the team. of the WHO.
On Saturday, Dominic Dwyer, an Australian infectious disease expert who is also a member of the team, said China had denied access to all requested data.