UK says it shares US concerns over WHO COVID-19 objective to China
15 February, 2021
British foreign minister Dominic Raab stated on Sunday (Feb 14) that he shared concerns about the level of access granted to a World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 fact-finding mission to China, echoing criticism from America.
The White House on Saturday called on China to offer data from the initial days and nights of the COVID-19 outbreak, saying it had "deep concerns" about what sort of findings of the WHO's COVID-19 report were communicated.
Asked about the US reaction, Raab told the BBC: "We carry out share worries that they get full cooperation and they acquire the answers they want, and so we'll be pushing for it to have full gain access to, get all of the data it desires in order to answer the questions that I think most of the people want to hear answered around the outbreak."
In another BBC interview, an associate of the WHO's delegation to China explained that, while Chinese authorities hadn't given all of them raw data, that they had seen a whole lot of information and discussed analysis of the primary cases.
"It would be unusual for them to give the raw data, but we looked at a lot of information at length in debate with the Chinese counterparts," explained John Watson, an epidemiologist who travelled to China within the WHO team.
On Saturday, Dominic Dwyer, an Australian infectious diseases professional, who is also a member of the team, explained China had refused usage of all of the data requested.
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