Australia backs WHO’s Wuhan findings on Covid, despite Coalition MP’s comments

The Australian government has backed findings that Covid-19 is unlikely to have leaked out of a Wuhan lab, even as some backbench members argue the World Health Organization’s credibility is “on the line”.

The health minister, Greg Hunt, said the Australian government had never promoted the lab leakage theory and he was pleased that WHO investigators had dismissed it – but Canberra awaited the expert team’s final report.

“I’m pleased this theory about labs and human-induced has been ruled out,” Hunt told the ABC on Wednesday. “That was never the advice, nothing something that the Australian government has ever pursued.”

The Morrison government’s push early last year for a global inquiry into the origins and handling of Covid-19 added fuel to tensions in the relationship between Australia and China, its largest trading partner, which branded the public calls as a political manoeuvre on behalf of the United States.

Although Beijing rolled out a series of trade actions against Australian export sectors, Scott Morrison pointedly declined to publicly back claims aired by Donald Trump that the virus may have leaked out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The lab theory was amplified by News Corp on the basis of a “dossier prepared by concerned western governments”, which raised concerns about practices at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and also included a raft of criticisms of China’s “assault on international transparency’’ and treatment of whistleblowers.

On Tuesday the WHO team that visited Wuhan all but dismissed the lab leakage theory, while giving some credence to China’s focus on the possibility of transmission via frozen food.

The team found no evidence of widespread circulation of the virus in Wuhan prior to December 2019, and said it was still unclear how it got into the Huanan seafood market, where the virus was initially detected.

But, they added, “all the work that has been done on the virus and trying to identify its origin continue to point toward a natural reservoir”.

The idea that the virus came from a laboratory-related incident was “extremely unlikely” and “isn’t a hypothesis we suggest implies further study”, said Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO’s food safety and animal disease specialist and chair of the investigation team.

Asked for further details, Embarek said the team looked at the arguments for and against the hypothesis, and while “accidents do happen … there had been no publication or research of this virus or one close to this virus, anywhere in the world.”

The hypothesis of direct zoonotic transmission from an animal to a human was worthy of further investigative studies, Embarek said, but the most likely pathway was via an intermediary species that was “potentially closer to humans where the virus can adapt and circulate and then jump to humans”.

Hunt said there “would be no surprises in the findings to date” and “it appears overwhelmingly likely that it’s come from the animal kingdom, what’s called a zoonotic origin”.

In an interview on Nine’s Today program, the host Karl Stefanovic told the health minister that “everyone thinks this is a cover-up”.

Hunt responded that he would await the final report. “At the end of the day, they have to do their work, we get on and do our work,” Hunt said.

“Our task is to make sure that we aren’t afraid of asking the difficult questions, and that’s what we should do as a country because, ultimately, that’s what’s going to save lives and protect lives.”

But some members of the government’s backbench were not so diplomatic.

The Victorian Liberal party MP Tim Wilson told Sky News: “The WHO’s credibility is on the line, based on the report they’ve produced, where it should be impartial, provide the facts and evidence, so that we know the origins of Covid-19 and the pandemic that has brought the world to a standstill, rather than seeking to hide or suppress information.”

Labor’s deputy leader, Richard Marles, described the interim findings as a first step. He said it was “very important that what the World Health Organisation gives us is ultimately a report and an investigation which is independent, and it’s got to go wherever the science leads us”.