WHO investigators praise China’s co-operation
World Health Organisation investigators looking for clues into the origin of the coronavirus in the central Chinese city of Wuhan said that the Chinese side had provided a high level of co-operation, but cautioned against expecting immediate results.
“I keep saying that we need to be realistic, a short mission like this one will not have all the answers but it helps advance the understanding of the virus origin,” Hung NguyenViet, co-leader of the Animal and Human Health Programme of the International Livestock Research
Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, said in a tweet yesterday.
In an earlier tweet, zoologist and team member Peter Daszak praised Thursday’s meetings with staff at the key Wuhan Institute of Virology, including with deputy director Shi Zhengli, a virologist who worked with Daszak to track down the origins of Sars that originated in China and led to the 2003 outbreak.
“Extremely important meeting today with staff at WIV including Dr Shi Zhengli. Frank, open discussion. Key questions asked and answered,” Daszak tweeted.
The team yesterday spent about two hours meeting managers and residents at the Jiangxinyuan community administrative centre in Wuhan’s Hanyang District. No details were given.
Official statistics show that there were at least 16 confirmed Covid-19 cases in the community last year among nearly 10,000 people living there when the virus broke out.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has collected extensive virus samples, leading to unproven allegations that it may have caused the original outbreak by leaking the virus into the surrounding community.
China has strongly denied that possibility and has promoted unproven theories that the virus may have originated elsewhere.
Along with the institute, the WHO team that includes experts from 10 nations has visited hospitals, research institutes, a traditional market tied to the outbreak and other sites.
Members of the team had met institute researchers and management, experts, vendors, residents and media representatives, the spokesperson for China’s National Health Commission, Mi Feng, told reporters at a briefing yesterday.
It is likely to take years and multiple investigations in many parts of the globe to confirm the origins of the virus because of the exhaustive research, including taking animal samples, genetic analysis and epidemiological studies required to pin down an outbreak’s animal reservoir.