Russian WHO expert cautions against politicizing pandemic

China is as interested in finding out the source of the novel coronavirus as the experts of the World Health Organization (WHO) sent to Wuhan, the TASS news agency reported Monday, citing a Russian member of the WHO's mission to China.

"There is no problem from the side of China. They are just as interested, we are working together," said Vladimir Dedkov, deputy research director at the St. Petersburg Pasteur Institute.

"Let's not consider our visit as that by a group of some investigators that are trying to implicate someone in something, as if China were initially to blame and were trying to make excuses. This is not true," he added.

Chinese representatives are cooperating as much as possible in order to ensure that the WHO's mission brings results, the expert stressed.

"This is not a situation when we came and they are trying to hide something from us," he said.

Dedkov was cited by the report as saying that WHO experts often face issues related to the politicization of the pandemic, but in reality the pandemic could have begun due to a variety of reasons.

"There are very many options here. They all must be studied before we make some definitive conclusion on the causes of the epidemic," he concluded.