WHO Head Says Dismissal of COVID Lab-Leak Hypothesis ‘Premature’

The head of the World Health Organization said it was “premature” to rule out the possibility that the novel coronavirus leaked from a laboratory, in comments to reporters on Thursday.

The WHO is “asking actually China to be transparent, open and cooperate, especially on the information, raw data that we asked for at the early days of the pandemic,” director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference. Tedros said there had been a “premature push” to rule out a lab leak as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I was...