WHO says Covid origin investigation is being ‘poisoned by politics’

A top World Health Organization official said Friday that investigations into the origins of Covid-19 are being “poisoned by politics.”

U.S. President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he’s ordered intelligence agencies to conduct “a report on their most up-to-date analysis of the origins of Covid-19, including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident.”

The WHO has come under increasing pressure in recent days from U.S. and European officials to take another look at whether the coronavirus could have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, after a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report came to light, revealing that three researchers sought hospital care after falling ill with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019.

Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, asked if countries could separate the politics from the science.