Information was withheld from WHO investigators who travelled to China to research the origins of the coronavirus epidemic, its director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says. 

Australia and 13 other countries have already called for China to give independent experts full access to all data about the original outbreak in late 2019 following the release of the WHO’s final report on Tuesday.

In the report, written jointly with Chinese scientists, the WHO-led team said the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal and that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely” as a cause.

The team, which spent fours weeks in and around Wuhan earlier this year, stressed there were was no evidence proving the presence of infected animals in the city’s wet market.