Several countries have openly expressed concerns over the findings of the team sent by the World Health Organization to China to investigate the origins of the coronavirus.
A total of 14 countries signed a statement that said that the team's assessment may not have been extensive enough.
In the co-signed statement submitted Wednesday, the countries pointed out underlying issues of the investigation such as the lack of full access to data and reporting delays.
The 14 countries that co-signed the statement included the U.S., Canada, Australia, Denmark, Estonia, the UK, South Korea, Norway, Japan, and the Czech Republic.
World Health Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus agreed, stating that he demands that the team conduct further research to come up with a "more robust conclusion."
"I do not believe that this assessment was extensive enough. Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy," Tedros said Wednesday.
China's foreign ministry disagreed with Tedros' assessment. The ministry said that it fully cooperated with the team and that it demonstrated "openness, transparency and responsible attitude" during the investigation.
The head of the research team, Peter Ben Embarek, defended their findings and said that it was not a "static product but a dynamic one." He said that the findings could change as they continue to analyze new data.
The team sent to China released their findings Tuesday after earlier this year visiting key areas, including the city of Wuhan where the virus was believed to have originated. The fact-finding mission took a total of four weeks. The team is comprised of 17 international experts.
The team concluded it was "extremely unlikely" that the coronavirus was spread due to a laboratory leak. Countries such as the U.S. have repeatedly accused China of being responsible for the pandemic, an accusation that China has denied.
Expert members of the fact-finding team said that it was "likely to very likely" that the virus may have been transmitted to humans from an intermediate host. The scientists said that virus was "possible to likely" be transmitted to humans from animals.
