The United States and a WHO expert demanded more data from Beijing on Saturday about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, after a WHO mission to China struggled to make headway.

A team of World Health Organization experts and Chinese counterparts visited key sites around the city of Wuhan, where Covid cases were first detected, but said they had not been able to shed light on the nature of early transmissions.

US national security advisor Jake Sullivan said his country had "deep concerns" about the early findings of the investigation.

Peter Ben Embarek, who led the WHO mission, told AFP in an interview his team had asked for more data, adding: "There is a mix of frustration but also a mix of realistic expectations in terms of what is feasible under which time frame."

Experts believe the disease -- which has killed nearly 2.4 million people worldwide -- originated in bats and could have been transmitted to humans via another mammal.

But while the virus was first discovered in Wuhan in December 2019, it remains unclear if that is when and where the contagion actually began.

The fallout came as Europe's death toll topped 800,000 and concerns over coronavirus variants that first emerged in Britain and South Africa forced ever tighter border controls.

- 'Nobody wants this' -

Germany is ramping up its border security, closing its frontiers with the Czech Republic and parts of Austria.

"I must cross the border before midnight," professional driver Ludvik Boucek told AFP on Saturday afternoon as he washed his truck at a service area at the western Czech crossing of Rozvadov.

"I'm glad the company dispatcher told me about the closure. I hadn't heard anything about it."

Portugal, among the world's hardest-hit nations, on Saturday extended the suspension of flights from Britain and Brazil to March 1.

On Friday, the government in Lisbon extended border controls with neighbouring Spain until March 1.

The pandemic has also hit international sporting events with the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne forced to continue without spectators as Victoria state enters its third lockdown since the pandemic began.

"The feeling is completely different -- nobody wants this," said Spanish great Rafa Nadal, referring to the 15,000 empty seats that faced him at Rod Laver Arena.

- 'Morally incompetent' -

While the tennis has been able to continue, Brazilian officials have been forced to cancel Rio de Janeiro's famed carnival.

The city would normally be enjoying the booming beats, glittering floats and glamorous dancers, but instead the "Sambadrome" is this year hosting a Covid-19 vaccination drive.

"Instead of a party, we're mourning our dead," Nilcemar Nogueira, founder of Rio's Samba Museum, told AFP.

The virus toll in Brazil stands at over 237,000, the second-highest number of deaths worldwide after the United States.

In neighbouring Peru, health minister Pilar Mazzeti resigned on Friday as a scandal grows over claims that former President Martin Vizcarra was vaccinated before the jab was available to the public.

Peru only began its immunisation programme on Tuesday, two days after receiving 300,000 vaccine doses from state-owned Chinese company Sinopharm.

But the Peru 21 newspaper reported on Thursday that Vizcarra had been vaccinated in secret in October, just weeks before he was impeached and removed from office on charges that he was "morally incompetent".

Meanwhile in Cyprus, police used water cannon and tear gas in rare clashes with protesters as hundreds demonstrated against government corruption and coronavirus restrictions.

WHO experts want 'more data' from China on possible early Covid cases
Geneva (AFP) Feb 13, 2021 - WHO experts voiced frustration Saturday at lacking access to raw data while in China probing the pandemic's origins, saying more was needed to detect possible early Covid cases.

"We want more data. We have asked for more data," Peter Ben Embarek, who headed WHO's expert mission to Wuhan, told AFP in an interview.

"There is a mix of frustration but also a mix of realistic expectations in terms of what is feasible under which time frame," he said, adding he hoped the requested data would be made available going forward.

The four-week WHO mission to China to uncover the origins of the coronavirus wrapped up earlier this week with no conclusive findings.

Experts believe the disease -- which has killed nearly 2.4 million people worldwide -- originated in bats and could have been transmitted to humans via another mammal.

But while the virus was first discovered in Wuhan in December 2019, it remains unclear if that is when and where the outbreak actually began.

The expert team determined that there were no signs of large clusters of Covid-19 in Wuhan or elsewhere prior to December that year, but did not rule out sporadic cases spreading before that.

- 'Trying to understand' -

Ben Embarek said the team would have been keen to have access to raw data about earlier cases of illnesses, including pneumonia, flu and fever, that could conceivably have been Covid.

Prior to the mission, Chinese scientists had scanned their systems and identified 72,000 such cases between October and December.

They had applied sets of criteria to determine if the cases could possibly be Covid, whittling down the list to just 92 cases worth examining.

Sixty-seven of those were submitted for serological tests. They all came back negative for Covid.

Ben Embarek said the team had asked in vain for the specific criteria used.

"We are trying to understand that process of getting from 72,000 down to 92", he said, saying access to the raw data requested would make it possible to apply "less stringent criteria so we have a larger number to work with".

"That will be a proposal for studies in the next phase," he said.

John Watson, a British epidemiologist and a member of the team, acknowledged that there was a "full and frank discussion" about access to the data, but said focusing too much on that aspect would be unfair.

The team's Chinese counterparts, he said, had a "done a huge amount of work" and had shared "enormous detail" about their work, methods and results.

"That is not to say that they gave us necessarily all of the raw data that we might have wanted, but that is a process that is developing," he said, voicing hope that "there is more to come".

Another team member, Peter Daszak, meanwhile rejected on Saturday a report that there had been shouting matches between the international team and their Chinese counterparts over data access.

"This was NOT my experience on @WHO mission," he said in a tweet, adding: "We DID get access to critical new data throughout."

- No 'smoking gun' -

The team members have had to walk a diplomatic tightrope, with the US urging a "robust" probe and China warning against politicising the issue.

On Saturday, US national security advisor Jake Sullivan voiced "deep concerns" over China's Covid-19 investigation, and urged it to "make available its data from the earliest days of the outbreak".

The US and others have been fiercely critical of delays in sending the WHO team to Wuhan, with the mission taking place more than a year after the first cases surfaced.

Ben Embarek acknowledged it would "have been fantastic" to go sooner, but pointed out that when disease outbreaks occur, the first reaction is to treat patients, not to try to figure out how it happened.

He also stressed it would have been impossible to conduct investigations during the early months, when Wuhan under strict lockdown.

Going forward, he said, the world should consider trying to run source investigations "in parallel".

But, he stressed, "it is not too late".

"There is still a lot to be learned, a lot to be discovered."

Watson agreed that it was still possible to learn much more about the early stages of the pandemic.

But he ruled out that investigators would "come up with a smoking gun" and determine exactly where and when the virus jumped from animals to humans.

That is "really very unrealistic", he said.

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WHO expert slams US pandemic intel as curbs tightened in Europe
Wuhan, China (AFP) Feb 10, 2021
A WHO expert sent to China to probe the coronavirus hit out at US intelligence on Covid-19 as his team headed home with few answers about the origin of a pandemic that was forcing more clampdowns in some of the hardest-hit parts of the world. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was set to seek an extension of strict virus curbs, as the European Commission chief addressed the stumbling vaccination rollout on the continent - which accounts for a third of the 2.3 million Covid-19 deaths worldwide. The ... read more