A team of World Health Organization (WHO) investigators is preparing to leave quarantine in the Chinese city of Wuhan and begin a long-awaited investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
An earlier report by a WHO team in China, published in February 2020, found that “key knowledge gaps remain” about the virus, though it endorsed previous findings that the virus appeared to have originated in animals, with the likely first outbreak at a seafood market in Wuhan.
In Geneva last week, the head of the US delegation to WHO called on China to allow the team in Wuhan access to “care givers, former patients and lab workers,” and to share all scientific studies into animal, human and environmental samples taken from a market in Wuhan, Reuters reported.
To what extent the Chinese authorities are willing to cooperate is unclear, particularly as even senior health officials have begun to question whether the virus originated in Wuhan, advancing the “multiple origins” theory that was first put out by the country’s propaganda organs in an apparent attempt to deflect blame over the initial handling of the pandemic.
