NEW YORK: Mike Ryan, Director of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) emergencies programme, has said at a news conference that the agency cannot compel China to divulge more data on the origins of COVID-19. 

"WHO doesn't have the power to compel anyone in this regard", Ryan said adding, "We fully expect cooperation, input and support of all of our member states in that endeavour."

This comes on the back of growing demand among the global scientific community for exploring the possibility that the coronavirus may have emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, leading to the global outbreak that has so far killed more than 3.8 million people worldwide.

A WHO team led by Peter Ben Embarek, was tasked with investigating the origins of the COVID-19 disease and they attended the WHO-China joint study news conference at a hotel in Wuhan, Hubei province early this year. However, they said they did not have access to all data, driving the continued debate about the country’s transparency.

There are competing theories that the virus jumped from animals, possibly starting with bats, to humans, or that it escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The hypothesis that the virus was accidentally leaked from the lab was largely disregarded by scientists in the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak. China has repeatedly denied that the lab was responsible for the outbreak.

Former US President Donald Trump and his supporters have consistently spoken about conspiracy theories that China deliberately leaked the virus. In fact last year, the then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted that there credible evidence that the virus came from the lab in China.