WHO inspectors start Wuhan fact-finding role
A WORLD Health Organisation team yesterday emerged from quarantine in the Chinese city of Wuhan to start a fact-finding mission on the origins of the virus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic.
The researchers, who were required to complete 14 days in quarantine after arriving in China, left their quarantine hotel and boarded a bus in the afternoon to travel to another hotel.
The mission has become politically charged as China seeks to avoid blame for alleged errors in its early response to the outbreak.
Major questions include where the Chinese authorities will allow the researchers to go, and who they will be able to talk to.
Earlier this month, former WHO official Keiji Fukuda, who is not part of the team in Wuhan, cautioned against expecting any breakthroughs, saying it may take years before any firm conclusions can be made on the virus’s origin.
“This is now well over a year past when it all started,” he said. “So much of the physical evidence is going to be gone. The memories of people are imprecise.”
The mission only came about after considerable wrangling that led to a rare complaint from the WHO that authorities in Beijing, the Chinese capital, were taking too long to make final arrangements.
China, which has strongly opposed an independent investigation it could not fully control, said the matter was complicated and that Chinese medical staff were preoccupied with new virus clusters in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities.
Chinese officials and state media have tried to cast doubt on whether the virus even started in China.