By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The World Health Organization (WHO) has asked the United States to reveal any intelligence at its disposal on the COVID-19 pandemic’s origins, a global health catastrophe that killed an estimated 20 million people.
The UN health agency’s request on Wednesday comes despite Washington exiting the WHO during President Donald Trump’s second term in office as US leader.
COVID-19 also shredded economies, crippled health systems and turned people’s lives upside-down across the globe.
The first cases were detected in Wuhan in China in late 2019. An understanding of where the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from is seen as key to preventing future pandemics.
On his first day back in office in January 2025, Trump handed the WHO his country’s one-year withdrawal notice, which cited “the organisation’s mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic”.
Trump’s administration has officially embraced the theory that the virus leaked from a virology laboratory in Wuhan.
But the WHO said Washington did not hand over any COVID origins intelligence before quitting the organization.
WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recalled that some countries have publicly said “they have intelligence about the origins — especially the US”.
Therefore, several months ago, the UN health agency wrote to senior officials in the United States, urging them to “share any intelligence information that they have”, Tedros said at a press conference on Wednesday.
“We haven’t received any information,” Tedros lamented.
“We hope they will share, because we haven’t still concluded the Covid origins,” and “knowing what happened could help us to prevent the next” pandemic.
The WHO’s investigations have proved inconclusive, pending further evidence, with all hypotheses still on the table.
Tedros asked any government which had intelligence on the Covid-19 pandemic’s origins to share the information so that the WHO will be able to reach a conclusion.
As the US withdrawal notice countdown expired on January 22, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the WHO had “obstructed the timely and accurate sharing of critical information that could have saved American lives”.
They also claimed the WHO had “tarnished and trashed everything that America has done for it”.
“The reverse is true,” the WHO said in reply.
