The World Health Organization (WHO) has suspended its investigation into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the pandemic coronavirus, citing problems in trying to conduct crucial research in China. This was reported by the international scientific journal Nature. This information was confirmed to the journal by WHO expert Maria van Kerkhove. According to her information, WHO had planned to carry out the relevant work in stages, but this plan has changed. According to the expert, the policy pursued around the world hinders progress in understanding the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Chinese authorities informed the WHO of an outbreak of unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan on Dec. 31, 2019. In early January 2020, China officially announced that a new type of coronavirus was the cause of the viral pneumonia outbreak. And already on March 11, 2020, the head of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus, said that the spread of the new coronavirus was pandemic in nature. In 2021, the WHO director general announced the establishment of the Scientific Advisory Group on the Origins of New Pathogens (SAGO), which consisted of 27 people from various countries, including Russia, Britain, Germany, China, India and others. The WHO in March 2021 published the full report of the organization's international panel of experts on a visit to Wuhan to determine the origin of the coronavirus, in which they called its leak from the laboratory "highly unlikely." The other version of the origin of the coronavirus - direct transmission to humans from an animal - was listed as "possible to probable" by the experts. The WHO mission also listed as "possible" that the virus could have originated through refrigerated foods.