The World Health Organization chief has acknowledged that a prior push to all but rule out the possibility that Covid-19 may have escaped from a lab had been "premature".
Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also urged China to be more cooperative in the next phase of investigations into the pandemic origins, demanding more access to raw data.
He said that the WHO was laying the groundwork for moving forward with fresh investigations into where Covid-19 came from, adding "we hope there will be better cooperation to get to the bottom of what happened".
The UN health agency has been facing intensifying pressure for a new, more in-depth investigation of Covid's origins. The WHO only managed to send a team of independent,