A team led by WHO investigates about animal health center in China
About the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of investigators directed by the World Health Organization (WHO) arrived on Tuesday at an animal health facility in China’s central city of Wuhan to search some evidences about the origins of this pandemic.
Indeed, the independent group has previously visited main hospitals, the regional disease control center and the city’s Huanan seafood market, where it’s believed that the first case of infections was appeared late in 2019.
Moreover, Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, informed Reuters on Tuesday that the trip was going “really well, excellent,” in response to a question just before entering the animal health center. Daszak also said that it had held very informative meetings; however he did not indicate more detail.
Furthermore, the center in the province of Hubei, which fights epidemic diseases in animals, could deliver more information about how a coronavirus endemic in horseshoe bats in southwest China might have crossed into humans, possibly through an intermediary species.
Otherwise, studies said that the virus could have been transferred from mink or pangolins, but there has also been suggestion that traders dealing in bat products could have transported the disease for months before it start to spread in Wuhan.
On his part, Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO’s top expert on zoonotic diseases that originate in animals, was among the team members clothed a white suits of personal protective equipment marked within the center’s buildings.
Nevertheless, despite most researchers states that the disease is most probably to have originated in China’s disturbed ecosystems, but some said that it could have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology that has made researches about bat viruses. It’s expected that the WHO group would visit the institute later this week.
The WHO’s top emergency official, Mike Ryan, stated on Monday that the investigation might not find all the answers to the origins of COVID-19, calling the mission as a detective story that raises new questions. He also criticized those who have declared that they would not accept the team’s findings, adding: It deserves the support of the international community and it deserves to be able to finish its work.
