WHO official pleads for a 'depoliticized' investigation into the origins of COVID-19

The investigation into the origins of the coronavirus is being "poisoned by politics," said Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Programme, at a press briefing on Friday.

"If you expect scientists to do their work ... and actually get the answers that you want ... we would ask that this be done in a depoliticized environment where science and health is the objective," not politics, he went on.

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Brigid Kennedy

Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.