Virus unlikely to have leaked from China lab

A World Health Organisation expert said on Tuesday the coronavirus is unlikely to have leaked from a Chinese lab and most probably jumped to humans via an intermediary species. ‘‘It was very unlikely that anything could escape from the laboratory,” a WHO official said, citing safety protocols.

WHO food safety and animal diseases expert Peter Ben Embarek gave the assessment while summing up the team's investigation into the possible origins of the coronavirus in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first cases were discovered in December 2019.

“All the work that has been done on the virus and trying to identify its origin continue to point toward a natural reservoir,” said Dr Embarek while speaking at a news conference in Wuhan.

There have been unproven allegations that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was collecting virus samples, may have caused the original outbreak by leaking the virus into the surrounding community.

China has strongly denied that possibility and countered by suggesting that the virus may have originated elsewhere.

The WHO team, which included experts from 10 nations, visited hospitals, research institutes and a traditional animal market in Wuhan; the latter is also blamed for the outbreak. The WHO visit took months to negotiate after China agreed to it amid massive international pressure; Beijing had continued to deny calls for a strictly independent investigation. Chinese authorities have kept a tight hold on information about the possible causes of the pandemic that has now sickened more than 105 million people and killed more than 2.2 million worldwide. Chinese officials on Tuesday used the news conference to argue that the search for the virus’s origin should focus on places outside China. The investigation will “not be restricted to any location,” said Liang Wannian, who led the team of Chinese scientists which assisted the WHO mission. For months, experts and politicians have denounced the WHO for allowing the Chinese government to control the inquiry into the source of the pandemic.