Irish Examiner view: The World Health Organization's mission impossible

WHO not investigating possibility that the coronavirus could have originated in a Chinese lab where scientists have studied coronaviruses for years

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, says the worst is yet to come in the Covid-19 pandemic. Picture: AP

Does the World Health Organization (WHO) have a death wish? It seems so, considering it has sent a fact-finding mission to China without investigating the prospect the coronavirus could have originated not in a food market in the city of Wuhan as Bejing asserts, but in a nearby laboratory where scientists have been studying coronaviruses for years.

With 10m known cases of infection and more than half a million deaths, the coronavirus continues to confound the world’s epidemiologists. Six months after China confirmed its existence, scientists are none the wiser about the precise place or time of the origin of the coronavirus which is key to fighting it more effectively. The urgency attached to acquiring this knowledge remains heightened since WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says the worst is yet to come.