WHO happy to be working with counterparts in China

The World Health Organization said on Friday its international expert team in China is "very happy to be there" and "very happy to be working with their Chinese counterparts".

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead on COVID-19, made the comments during a virtual news conference.

And the organization called on critics to give the team the time and space it needs to do its work.

Van Kerkhove said the team is currently in Wuhan, undergoing a period of quarantine and liaising with Chinese counterparts by video link.

Once the quarantine period is over, members will meet their counterparts face-to-face, she said.

Van Kerkhove said the field study of an outbreak takes time and includes a series of other studies, many of which have begun.

And she stressed that the WHO will not be giving day-to-day updates.

"What we need to do is to let them do the work," the United States epidemiologist added.

Van Kerkhove and Bruce Aylward, a senior advisor to the WHO director-general, spent time in China early last year.

"We are grateful for the opportunity to have worked directly, scientists-to-scientists, to be able to have that level of interaction," she said.

And she cautioned people to be careful about using the phrase "patient zero" because it suggests there was a case that kicked the pandemic off, and that it will be found.

"We may never find who the patient zero was," she said, in response to a question about the study of a case found in Italy in November of 2019.

Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, echoed her views, saying there is no guarantee answers will be found, as has been the case in the study of some other emerging diseases.

"It's a difficult task to fully establish the origins," he said. "Sometimes, it can take two to three or four attempts to do that in different settings."

Ryan also emphasized that it's very important for the team to "have the space to do the work".

"We can't debate this every day, what they do today and tomorrow and the next day. They have to have the space to do the work," he said, while adding that the team will be in touch with the media in the field, and that there will be regular briefings.

On Friday, the WHO's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned people not to lower their guard, because cases and deaths from COVID-19 are continuing to rise rapidly in some parts of the world.

Some countries in Europe, Africa, and the Americas are seeing spikes in cases, with multiple factors driving transmission risk, according to the WHO.

"This is because we are collectively not succeeding at breaking the chains of transmission at the community level or within households," Tedros said.

At his request, the WHO emergency committee on COVID-19 met virtually on Thursday and issued a statement on Friday.

On the subject of variants of the virus, the committee called for a global expansion of genomic sequencing and the sharing of data, along with greater scientific collaboration to address critical unknowns.

On vaccines, it underlined the need for equitable access through the COVAX facility, as well as technology transfer to increase global production capacities.