GENEVA, Feb 5, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - The head of the World Health

Organization met Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Saturday for talks on
Covid-19, including on the stalled investigation into the pandemic's
origins.

  WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, visiting Beijing
for the 2022 Winter Olympics, posted a picture on Twitter of the pair
sitting with officials in a meeting room.

  "Pleased to meet with Premier Li Keqiang. We discussed Covid-19 and
the need for an aggressive effort on vaccine equity this year to
vaccinate 70 percent of all populations," Tedros said.

  "We also discussed the need for stronger collaboration on Covid-19
virus origins, rooted in science and evidence.

  "I welcomed his support to strengthen WHO and discussion about a
pandemic accord to advance global preparedness," he added.

  A Chinese government statement on the meeting said Li called for
solidarity, cooperation and more understanding among nations to defeat
the pandemic.

  On tracing the origins of the virus, it said Tedros adhered to
scientific principles and opposed politicising the process.

  - Lab-leak theory -

  Tedros is paying his first visit to China since January 2020, in the
weeks after the first cases of Covid-19 were recorded in Wuhan.

  More than 370 million cases and 5.6 million deaths have since been
reported to the WHO -- figures it says are an underestimate.

  Understanding where the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid came from
is seen as key to preventing future pandemics.

  After much delay, a WHO team of international experts went to Wuhan
in January 2021 to look into the origins of the virus in cooperation
with their Chinese counterparts.

  Their March 2021 joint report concluded that the most likely
hypothesis was that the virus jumped from bats to humans via an
intermediate animal.

  They deemed a theory that it may have escaped from Wuhan's virology
laboratories "extremely unlikely".

  However, that investigation faced harsh criticism for lacking
transparency and access, and for not evaluating the lab-leak theory
seriously.

  - WHO 'won't stop' searching -

  Beijing has baulked at calls for further investigation on the
ground, and has not provided access to raw data from the Wuhan
laboratories that could potentially help confirm or rule out a
connection.

  The Geneva-based WHO has created a new team of scientists in a bid
to revive the stalled probe, and to investigate other pathogens that
could potentially spur future pandemics.

  Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead on Covid-19, said the
team were examining the framework needed to study any emerging
pathogen; the current understanding of Covid-19's origins; and fresh
evidence from studies conducted since the March 2021 report.

  "What they are looking at are the early epidemiologic studies. What
do we know about those earliest suspected and known cases that were
reported in China?" she told a press conference in Geneva on Tuesday.

  "Many more studies are necessary to really understand the emergence
of this virus.

  "We, as WHO, won't stop until we exhaust all avenues to better
understand this."