In a major development, the World Health Organization (WHO) team due to investigate the origins of Covid-19 in the city of Wuhan has been denied entry to China. WHO said the problem was a lack of visa clearances.The long-awaited probe was agreed upon by Beijing in December after many months of negotiations with the WHO. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was "very disappointed" that China had not yet finalised the permissions for the team's arrivals "given that two members had already begun their journeys and others were not able to travel at the last minute". "I have been assured that China is speeding up the internal procedure for the earliest possible deployment," he told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday, explaining that he had been in contact with senior Chinese officials to stress "that the mission is a priority for WHO and the international team".
WHO has been constantly working to find the exact cause of the pandemic. Last month it was announced that the investigation would begin in January 2021.The two members of the international team that had already departed for China had set off early on Tuesday, said the WHO. According to Reuters news agency, WHO emergencies chief Mike Ryan said one had turned back and one was in a third country. Covid-19 was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in central Hubei province in late 2019. It was initially believed the virus originated in a market selling exotic animals for meat. It was suggested that this was where the virus made the leap from animals to humans. Adhanom Ghebreyesus' rare rebuke of China comes amid ongoing criticism by the United States and Australia of WHO's response to the pandemic, which was first detected in Wuhan at the end of 2019.The Trump administration withdrew from the WHO claiming the organisation had been corrupted by China. President-elect Joe Biden is poised to get the US to rejoin after his inauguration.