The United States health secretary has urged the World Health Organization to assure transparent next phase of probe into the origins of COVID-19.

At a ministerial-level WHO meeting, Xavier Becerra stated that international experts should be allowed to assess the source of the virus. US media reports point to increasing evidence that the virus could have originated from a laboratory in China.

The WHO had issued a report, jointly with Chinese scientists, in March on the origins of COVID-19, which stated that the odds of it having originated in a lab were highly unlikely. The agency had acknowledged that further study was required. Questions still persist and reports ascribed to the US intelligence sources indicate that three members of the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been hospitalized in November 2019, weeks before China informed about the first case of the novel disease… (BBC, May 26, 2021)