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KUALA LUMPUR (Bernama): It has been a little over a year since the first case of Covid-19 was reported in China, but the world is still puzzled about the true origins of the coronavirus.
Even after 56 million cases and 1.3 million deaths, scientists have yet to focus on how the virus got out of control.
These and many more pressing questions will be the focus of an international task force led by Dr. Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist who has spent years studying coronavirus transmission in China and Southeast Asia.
“We intend to conduct a thorough and rigorous investigation into the origins and early spread of SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19),” said Dr. Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a non-governmental organization that works on connections. critics. between human, animal and environmental health on a global scale.
The 12-member task force is also part of The Lancet’s Covid-19 Commission. The Lancet is one of the oldest and most recognized weekly peer-reviewed general medical journals in the world.
In a press release on Monday (November 23), the task force said its members come from a diverse set of disciplines and scientific backgrounds, with expertise in outbreak investigation, virology, laboratory biosafety, and disease ecology.
One of the members is the prominent Malaysian virologist emeritus, Professor Datuk Dr. Lam Sai Kit, a leader in emerging viral infections who was also instrumental in the discovery of the Nipah virus.
“It is timely to form the commission as we now have more comprehensive data and materials to work with. This enables the commission to provide a ‘cutting edge’ assessment and offer governments, civil society and United Nations institutions practical solutions and recommendations in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, ”Dr. Lam told Bernama on Monday.
“This working group has been given 12 months to conduct an objective and rigorous scientific review of all available information on the origins, early control of the pandemic, and One Health’s solutions for future pandemic threats,” said Lam, who also is a research consultant at Universiti Malaya and a senior fellow at the Malaysian Academy of Sciences.
One Health is an approach to designing and implementing programs, policies, legislation, and research in which multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve better public health outcomes.
In its research, the task force will recreate the schedule of the Covid-19 outbreak from the end of the SARS outbreak in 2003 until the WHO declaration of Covid-19 as a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020.
They will also analyze the available evidence for each of the hypotheses raised about the origins of Covid-19 and compare early spread and control with previous outbreaks.
This is so they can identify strategies that can aid future prevention of a pandemic, the task force said.
In the statement, Columbia University’s Dr. Jeffrey D. Sachs, who is the chairman of The Lancet Covid-19 Commission, said there was a lot of interest in understanding how Covid-19 emerged and spread, but also a reason. deeper for the work of the task force.
“If we can understand why this pandemic started, we can help prevent the next one,” he said. – Bernama
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