WHO Assures That Coronavirus Is Natural Amid Trump Attack | 2020-05-03 13:50:11 (Visits: 1023 Times) |  | | World Health Organization Health Emergencies Programme Director Michael Ryan speaks during a news briefing on COVID-19 in Geneva, Switzerland on March 30.AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder, Staff Writer?May 1, 2020, at 4:35 p.m.
THE WORLD HEALTH Organization on Friday emphatically reiterated its conclusion that the coronavirus is a natural phenomenon, a day after President Donald Trump criticized the global body and said that U.S. scientists and intelligence personnel are still exploring the origins of the pandemic.
"We have listened again and again to numerous scientists who've looked at the sequences, looked at this virus, and we are assured that this virus is natural in origin," Mike Ryan, the executive director of WHO's health emergencies program, said at a press conference on Friday.It's a message WHO has delivered before, including in one of its coronavirus daily reports from last week: "All available evidence to date suggests that the virus has a natural animal origin and is not a manipulated or constructed virus."like if it had been spread accidentally from the Chinese lab.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Friday defended Trump's statement, saying it is consistent with other intelligence assessments.
"While we continue to have very limited and dubious data from China, current assessments indicated that President Trump's statement is consistent with what some analysts believe is the epicenter of where the virus began," McEnany said at the first briefing from a White House press secretary in over a year.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence in its statement said that the intelligence community "will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan." |
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