WHO research team to travel to China in January to investigate COVID-19 origin

A team from the World Health Organisation (WHO) is expected to travel to Wuhan, China, in January to investigate the animal origins of unprecedented coronavirus. While speaking to Associated Press, Fabian Leendertz, a member of the WHO’s 10-person mission team, said that they will be working with Chinese scientists for four to five weeks. Leendertz added that the WHO team will look at stored medical samples and x-rays from before the first known outbreak to see if the virus was circulating earlier, and take samples from bats and other species to try track down the animal in which the virus first emerged. 

He said, “Then to see where that track leads us, if it’s another city or if it stays in Wuhan or where that goes”. Leendertz also added that it was possible that the Wuhan market was “just the first mega-spreading event or one of the first”. He said, “The big scope is to try and find out what happened. How the virus jumped from which animal to perhaps an intermediate host and then to humans. To reconstruct the scenario”. 

READ: China Urges Australia To Take Concerns Seriously

China on COVID-19 origin 

The virus had first surfaced in China last year. On the issue of COVID-19 origin, Chinese media reports have been stating that the Coronavirus did not start in Wuhan. Ever since Zeng Guang, an ex-epidemiologist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said that coronavirus originated elsewhere before it appeared in China in December 2019, the state-controlled media of the Communist State have directed all their resources in propagating the claim as fact. 

READ: China Prepares For Return Of Lunar Probe With Moon Samples

China is yet to provide any solid evidence to back the claim, which western scientists say is nothing but "a way to whitewash" itself. China's reputation at the international stage has been tarnished after it emerged that the virus originated from a seafood market in Wuhan, which was operating illegally. 

China has reassured that it would allow international experts to enter the country in order to investigate the animal origins of COVID-19, World Health Organization said on November 23. The UN agency, in July, had sent a team of experts to lay the groundwork for investigation. Meanwhile, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian indicated that it doesn't necessarily mean that the virus originated in China, even though the country was the first in the world to report cases. Chinese scientists have also submitted a paper to science journal The Lancet, wherein they have suggested that the virus may have originated in the Indian subcontinent well before it appeared in China.

READ: Australia Accuses China Of Breaching Trade Rules; Slams 'discriminatory' Coal Ban

READ: Australia To Seek WTO Intervention In Barley Row With China