The World Health Organization leads an international team of scientists who arrived in China’s central city of Wuhan for COVID-19 origins investigation. They are expected to investigate the origins of the novel coronavirus that sparked the pandemic.
The team arrived late in the morning from Singapore and was likely to head into two weeks of quarantine. The agency’s chief showed disappointment and public criticism due to China’s delay in their visit.
The United States had accused China of hiding the extent of COVID-19’s initial outbreak a year ago. The States has also called for a “transparent” WHO-led investigation. It also critiqued the terms of the visit, under which Chinese authorities have completed their first phase of research.
The WHO team arrived as China is fighting a resurgence of cases despite its many ways of managing to stamp out the domestic infections.
WHO sent the best experts on board for investigation
Peter Ben Embarek— the WHO’s top expert on animal diseases is guiding the 10 independent experts. Hung Nguyen— a Vietnamese biologist is also a part of the 10-member team and had put forth that he did not expect any limitations on the group’s work in China, but was alerted against finding firm answers.
Hung has also said that after the team completes their quarantine, it will spend two weeks questioning people from several research institutes, hospitals, and the seafood market in Wuhan. They will be going after these places as the COVID-19 pathogen was emerged here and the team would mainly stay in Wuhan itself.
Tedros Adhanom Gheybreyesus, WHO director-general showed his displeasure when China had not authorized the team’s entry for the long-awaited mission.
Ben Embarek said, “What we would like to do with the international team and counterparts in China is to go back in the Wuhan environment, re-interview in-depth the initial cases, try to find other cases that were not detected at that time and try to see if we can push back the history of the first cases.”
Is China declining COVID-19 COVID-19 origins investigation?
China has claimed COVID-19 existed abroad before it was discovered in Wuhan. As the presence of the virus was found to be on imported frozen food packaging and scientific papers claiming it had been circulating in Europe in 2019.
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