geneva the united states and britain are stepping up calls for the world health organisation to take a deeper look into the possible origins of covid19 including a new visit to china where the first human infections were detected who and chinese experts issued a first report in march that laid out four hypotheses about how the pandemic emerged the joint team said the most likely scenario was that the coronavirus jumped into people from bats via an intermediary animal and the prospect that it erupted from a laboratory was deemed extremely unlikely late thursday the us diplomatic mission in geneva issued a statement saying the first phase of the study was insufficient and inconclusive and called for a timely transparent evidencebased and expertled phase 2 study including in the peoples republic of china the statement coming in the middle of the whos annual assembly in geneva demanded access for independent experts to complete original data and samples relevant to the source of the virus and early stages of the outbreak we appreciate the whos stated commitment to move forward with phase 2 of the covid19 origins study and look forward to an update from director general tedros adhanom ghebreyesus the statement said also thursday the british ambassador in geneva simon manley said the first phase study was always meant to be the beginning of the process not the end we call for a timely transparent evidencebased and expertled phase two study including in the peoples republic of china as recommended by the experts report he said who spokesman tarik jasarevic said in an email that a technical team led by peter ben embarek who headed the who team in china that coauthored the first report was preparing a proposal for the next studies that will need to be carried out jasarevic said that proposal would be presented to tedros for his consideration but said there was no timetable such a presentation after the first report was released the who chief acknowledged that further studies were needed on issues like early detection of cases and clusters and the possible roles of animal markets transmission through the food chain and the labincident hypothesis jasarevic noted the push in geneva amounts to a new front of us pressure a day after president joe biden said that he had instructed the us intelligence community to redouble their efforts to get information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion on the virus origins and to report back in 90 days bidens administration wants to step up calls for china to be more open about the outbreak aiming to head off complaints from opposition republican senators that the president has not been tough enough as well as to use the opportunity to press china on alleged obstruction republicans including former president donald trump have promoted the theory that the virus emerged from a laboratory accident rather than naturally through human contact with an infected animal in wuhan china on