The WHO team publishes conclusions on the origin of COVID-19



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“There is no data on the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the population until 2019. The leader of the Chinese team, Liang Wannian, said at a press conference, adding that” there is not enough evidence “to determine whether the virus already it has spread to the city.

The WHO mission was unable to determine from which animals the infection was transmitted to humans, scientists said Tuesday.

Experts estimate that the diseases have already transmitted more than 2.3 million. human lives, the main carriers are probably bats, but humans may have contracted the coronavirus from other mammals.

Although the animals are likely to carry the infection, so far “no hosts have been identified,” Liang Wannian, a team leader who worked in China, told reporters.

He added that research shows that the virus “can be transported long distances in frozen products.” This statement can be understood to support the hypothesis of virus imports into China.

The expert added that “no signs were found” that the virus had spread in the central Chinese city of Wuhan before December 2019, when the world’s first human infections were officially confirmed.

PSO Uhana Mission

PSO Uhana Mission

WHO expert Ben Embarak, who has served the organization’s Beijing mission for two years since 2009, backed the statement, saying there was no evidence of “major outbreaks” in Wuhan to date.

A couple of days ago, Peter Daszak, a New York zoologist who is assisting the WHO-backed mission, said scientists had gathered “important evidence” on the role of the Wuhan seafood market during the outbreak.

Speaking from the central city of Wuhan, where COVID-19 broke out in December 2019, the man said a fourteen-member group worked with experts in China, visiting key focal points and research centers to reveal “some real facts about what what happened”.

The researchers sought to determine how the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the most genetically similar virus found in bats more than 1,600 kilometers away, suddenly spread in Wuhan, causing the worst viral crisis in more than a century. According to Daszak, this study of them heralds a turning point in the fight against the pandemic.

“Hopefully we will start to have a very clear understanding of what has happened, which will allow us to prevent a new crisis,” Daszak said Friday night during the Zoom program. – Our most important task is to try to understand why such things happen to avoid regular global economic crises and terrible mortality in the future while we wait for vaccines. It just isn’t a case where the future can be predicted by logical reasoning. “

The first cases of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan in December 2019.

Scientists estimate that more than 2 million The infection that killed humans worldwide was originally a disease of bats and could have been transmitted to humans via some other mammal.

However, there are still no definitive answers, and top WHO officials have given no hope of finding the mission that has received too much attention for the first time.

Peteris Benas Embarekas, Marion Koopmans

Peteris Benas Embarekas, Marion Koopmans

They noted that after the visit to Wuhan, many new questions are likely to arise that need to be answered.

After leaving the hotel, where they were quarantined for 14 days, WHO experts visited several important sites linked to the origin of the pandemic, such as the seafood market where the first infected were found.

Last Wednesday, an expert trip to the Wuhan Institute of Virology was one of the highest in the world on the WHO team’s agenda due to the controversial theory that a pandemic could have started from it.

Researchers working in the lab are investigating some of the most dangerous diseases, including a bat-like strain of coronavirus similar to COVID-19.

At the beginning of the pandemic, a version was raised that the virus could have been accidentally released from the Wuhan laboratory, although there was no evidence to support this theory.

Because of these rumors, then-US President Donald Trump has raised conspiracy theories that China deliberately released the virus.

As Peter Ben Embarek told AFP last Thursday, the inspectors “communicated very candidly” with Chinese scientists about the origins of the pandemic and, among other things, discussed theories that the virus had been released from the laboratory.

Ben Embarek called some theories irrational, but did not specify which one he was referring to. He added that researchers will not waste time trying to evaluate the most radical statements.



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