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The WHO team investigating the origins of COVID-19 in the Chinese city of Wuhan said Wednesday that it has obtained data “no one had seen before” and that it has not yet ruled out the possibility that the virus causing the pandemic has escaped from a laboratory, although they consider it unlikely.
“We are seeing new information and it is good, it is very valuable material that is beginning to help us find the correct directions for this virus,” said Dr. Peter Daszak, who is part of the mission of the World Health Organization.
In an interview with the British news site Sky News, Daszak said that visits to the site were offering valuable information, especially in the Huanan seafood market, where the first cases of COVID-19 emerged.
“We are in the market looking on our own and asking questions, we are meeting with the market managers, with the vendors who worked there and with people in the community and asking them questions. We’re talking to people who collected soil samples from the market that then tested positive, ”explained Daszak.
“There are small clues that we are finding here and there, in large amounts of data,” he stressed.
“We are getting somewhere”
“They are sharing with us data that we have not seen before, that no one has seen before. They are talking to us openly about all possible avenues. I think all the team members would say that we are getting somewhere ”, added the scientist, after indicating that all the theories about the origin of the virus.
The WHO mission is a sensitive issue for China, which denies being responsible for the outbreak of the pandemic in 2019 and took more than a year to authorize the visit of international experts.
The journalists followed the team to the high-security facilities, but like previous visits there was little direct access to team members, who in China have given scant details of their discussions and visits so far.
Here is today’s press pack at the Wuhan Institute of Virology from our car. We are trying to do our best to keep the information flowing, being respectful to our hosts here in China and not getting ahead of work. We see you guys and we appreciate your attention to this. @WHO mission pic.twitter.com/UvV70Uu2Rs
– Peter Daszak (@PeterDaszak) February 3, 2021
The visit to the Institute of Virology lasted four hours and was an “extremely important meeting with the staff” and an “open and frank discussion,” Daszak said on Twitter.
The Wuhan institute has several high-security laboratories where researchers work with coronaviruses and has the largest collection of strains in Asia, with 1,500 different specimens, according to its website.
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