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Has the WHO investigated the origin of COVID-19 outside of China? Is there a procedure that the WHO uses when it needs to investigate the origin of a virus, and what has the WHO done to get some needed data in China, and outside of China, because to me it doesn't seem like the WHO has done anything beside some investigation in China and didn't do any serious or extensive study outside of China as though it assumed it came from China and not any other country.

For the first phase, the WHO formed a team of ten researchers with expertise in virology, public health and animals to conduct a thorough study.[120] One of the team's tasks was to retrospectively ascertain what wildlife was being sold in local wet markets in Wuhan.[121] The WHO's phase one team arrived and quarantined in Wuhan, Hubei, China in January 2021.[94][122]

Members of the team included Thea Fisher, John Watson, Marion Koopmans, Dominic Dwyer, Vladimir Dedkov, Hung Nguyen-Viet, Fabian Leendertz, Peter Daszak, Farag El Moubasher, and Ken Maeda. The team also included five WHO experts led by Peter Ben Embarek, two Food and Agriculture Organization representatives, and two representatives from the World Organisation for Animal Health.[1]

The inclusion of Peter Daszak in the team stirred controversy. Daszak is the head of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that studies spillover events, and has been a longtime collaborator of over 15 years with Shi Zhengli, Wuhan Institute of Virology's director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases.[123][124] While Daszak is highly knowledgeable about Chinese laboratories and the emergence of diseases in the area, his close connection with the WIV was seen by some as a conflict of interest in the WHO's study.[123][125] When a BBC News journalist asked about his relationship with the WIV, Daszak said, "We file our papers, it's all there for everyone to see."[126]

The team was denied access to raw data, including the list of early patients, swabs, and blood samples.[127] It was allowed only a few hours of supervised access to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.[128]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigations_into_the_origin_of_COVID-19

There has to be a sort of guideline that justifies this, because to me it sounds ridiculous to focus on only one country and not do any investigation elsewhere.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0300891620974755

Antibodies were detected in November and sometimes even September, much earlier than initially thought.

academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/12/e1004/6012472?login=false

COVID-19 may have came to the U.S. in November as antibodies were found in December samples in states with low Chinese population.

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    How would that work? The reason they were looking for the origins in China is because that's where the first cases were recorded. Where would you start if you don't have any cases preceding those in Wuhan?
    – JJJ
    Commented Mar 3, 2023 at 0:25
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    The investigations were never aiming to discover in which country the virus originated, that is completely uncontroversial. We know it started in Wuhan because the first known cases were there, and it's infectious enough that if it actually started somewhere else and spread to Wuhan we would have seen other cases wherever it spread from. That in itself is not any sort of criticism or blame on China though. The point of investigating at all is to find out more about exactly how it started, not where.
    – Ben
    Commented Mar 3, 2023 at 2:49
  • There were cases recorded in the United States and they dismissed it as not being possible even though the studies were carried by the CDC and other American institutions. I mean, if that's not criminal, that's being extremely stupid. They should be looking at every country and looking at every sample. This policy will only be an incentive for countries to not report new diseases and report it as new variants of the flu.
    – Sayaman
    Commented Mar 3, 2023 at 2:53

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Not yet. Although at Chinese insistence, after China blocked the original phase 2 studies in China proposed by the WHO, there is some vague talk of broader studies in the [new] WHO draft proposal like

Coronaviruses phylogenetically related to SARS-CoV-2 have been discovered in Rhinolophus species (horseshoe bats) around the world, particularly in South-East Asia. Retrospective tests of samples collected from Rhinolophus bats should be carried out globally and in particular in Asia and South-East Asia.

Although I should say that 90% of the concrete proposal in that draft still focus on studies in China (too many to quote, really, at least 10 bullets/paras).

And since those are blocked, the WHO now is now embroiled in a controversy whether they are even doing anything [concrete] at all in those origin studies regards.

The Western scientific community has taken a very dismal view of most of those Chinese alternative-theory proposals/views/papers [on this], with phrases like "smoke and mirrors", "childish lie[s]", and "bullshit" being uttered about them, in less official contexts.

Frozen meats/produce, seemingly one of the favorite alternative theories coming from China as to how the virus got there, isn't included/mentioned in the revised WHO draft, as far as I can tell.

Regarding the retrospective antibody studies [added to the Q in an edit], the draft WHO proposal has this to say, in essence "work is currently ongoing" on "verification and/or validation"

In addition, the SAGO has reviewed publications with findings of SARS-CoV-2 detection in biological and environmental samples in 2019 from different parts of the world (Table 3). In some cases, such as in Italy, France and the United States, verification and/or validation has been initiated by WHO through the help of external laboratories. This work is currently ongoing (Montomoli et al., 2021). The SAGO supports further investigations in any part of the world where there is firm evidence of SARS-CoV-2 virus activity before the recognized outbreak in Wuhan in December 2019. This should also be considered in other areas where there has been evidence of early SARS-CoV-2 activity (see some examples of studies in Table 3).

And as a cautionary tale why verification might be need, they also say this (a little bit before)

The SAGO was also presented with new unpublished serologic results by Chinese scientists of more than 40 000 stored samples from blood donors in Wuhan who provided blood between September and December 2019 (Chang et al., 2022). These samples were reported to have been tested for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. More than 200 samples proved positive (by ELISA), however, none were positive upon using a confirmative assay (by serum neutralization assays). Other samples collected in Wuhan prior to December 2019 were reported to be negative on retrospective serological testing. The SAGO has requested further information on these data and the methods used to analyze these samples.

That table 3 spans like 4 pages, so I won't even try to squeeze it here. But there's a 2nd para about that table:

The SAGO has begun to evaluate studies that have published results indicating SARS-CoV-2 positive samples collected prior to December 2019. Table 3 lists studies that have suggested the possible detection of SARS-CoV-2 in stored samples prior to the start of the outbreak in those countries. The SAGO notes that the methods of each study with results indicating positive samples in 2019 requires further validation and verification and thus the significance of these findings remains unclear. The SAGO is currently reviewing these studies and the methods used to identify the positive samples and will provide further information in forthcoming reports to WHO.

And at the bullet/recommendation level that's abstracted to

With WHO coordination, a comprehensive verification exercise of any detection of SARS-CoV-2 from biological samples from 2019 should be continued worldwide.

And now that I look more carefully they do say something about preserved foods, but not [explicitly] frozen ones, although one might read as included in "etc.":

There should be particular attention to culling activities before or after the first detection of SARS-CoV-2 in humans. Animal products, either preserved (dry, smoked, fermented, sausages, etc.) or potentially stored from culling activities or animal products from the period before the outbreak should be identified and tested. Humans employed in breeding facilities or in the downstream exploitation chain should be identified and serologically tested. Sera from such persons should be shared with international laboratories for external verification.

No country (China or other) is mentioned in that para, as you can see.

But as some kind of conclusion here, the WHO doesn't seem geared up to do much investigation themselves. They mostly review others' findings and make recommendations, at least on these matters, and in that report. The breadth of recommendations also makes it hard to tell which ones they might consider a priority. However this situation doesn't seem atypical. A little googling found that:

While the WHO did offer some normative leadership during the Ebola outbreak, as per its constitution, it did not provide an effective operational response, yet nor did it have a mandate to do so. This division between the normative and operational was further highlighted by the discrepancy between what the global community expects the WHO to do in a health emergency, and what it is able to do with its financial and organizational constraints.

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  • journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0300891620974755 The antibodies were detected in November and sometimes even September, much earlier than initially thought. This raise the question as to why the WHO only wants to focus the search to Asia.
    – Sayaman
    Commented Mar 3, 2023 at 5:19
  • academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/12/e1004/6012472?login=false COVID-19 may have came to the U.S. in November as antibodies were found in December samples in states with low Chinese population.
    – Sayaman
    Commented Mar 3, 2023 at 5:34
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    @Sayaman: antibodies can cross-react. If you want to discuss those studies in more detail, P.SE is not right venue, try medicalsciences.stackexchange.com for instance. At the political level, the issue seems to be that China isn't too keen on having such studies done... in China. Commented Mar 3, 2023 at 5:39
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    The obvious problem with claims that COVID was present elsewhere months earlier is that we really should have noticed it. Given the number of infections and deaths in the first waves, especially in countries that didn't act fast, there should be a massive spike in deaths back in November 2019 when basically no one was taking any kind of preventative measures. Commented Mar 3, 2023 at 10:37
  • I don't think so, there were periods where we had huge spikes and periods where the number of deaths were far less. I was trying to get some data on EVALI and COVID, but it seems like there's no public data available, and there were some strange flu outbreaks that weren't investigated within the U.S.
    – Sayaman
    Commented Mar 3, 2023 at 12:54

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