China should provide raw data on pandemic's origins - WHO's Tedros
(VOVWORLD) -The head of the World Health Organisation said on Thursday that investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in China were being hampered by the lack of raw data on the first days of spread there and urged it to be more transparent.
 World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. (Photo: Reuters)
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WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference on Thursday, "We ask China to be transparent and open and to cooperate.”
”We owe it to the millions who suffered and the millions who died to know what happened,” he said.
German Health Minister Jens Spahn also called on China to make it possible for investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic to continue, saying more information was needed.
Speaking during a visit to the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva on Thursday, Spahn announced a 260 million euro donation to WHO's ACT-Accelerator program, which aims to ensure the entire world, including poorer countries, receive coronavirus vaccines and tests.
China has called the theory that the virus may have escaped from a Wuhan laboratory "absurd" and said repeatedly that "politicizing" the issue will hamper investigations.