WHO presents a team of 10 scientists to trace the origins of Covid-19 in the ground zero of the Wuhan pandemic

The World Health Organization (WHO) has named the 10 scientists it is sending to ground zero for the coronavirus in Wuhan to investigate the origins of the disease.

Experts still don’t know how Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, jumped to humans in the Hubei province city last year, or in which animal it originated.

WHO has assembled an international team of leading virus hunters, public health experts and zoologists to tackle these burning questions.

Included in the lineup is England’s former deputy chief medical officer John Watson, who was in office from 2013 to 2017 under the governments of David Cameron and Theresa May.

But the UN agency has tried to temper expectations of a short-term response, warning that tracking down any new pathogens is a “puzzle that can take years to solve.”

It took scientists more than a year to prove that MERS, another coronavirus, originated from camels in Saudi Arabia, and even longer to trace the original SARS back to bats in a cave in southern China.

One of the key sights is the controversial Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where dead and live animals were kept dangerously close to each other in tight cages.

The market, where the animals were slaughtered on request, has been touted as the original epicenter of the disease. The team of scientists will try to trace which animals may have carried the virus and where they came from.

Another great point of interest is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a high-security biochemical laboratory in the heart of the city.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has appointed the 10 scientists it is sending to ground zero for the coronavirus in Wuhan to investigate the origins of the disease. One of the main points of interest is the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market (pictured)

Skinned chicks at the market, where live animals were kept in narrow cages and could be slaughtered on request.

There have been worldwide suspicions that the crisis originated at the institute after intelligence officials in the US and the UK raised the alarm about the lab’s work on bats, though the theories have never been proven.

Beijing gave the WHO its blessing last month to dispatch the 10-man expert team early next year after conducting a preliminary ‘scouting mission’ in China over the summer, though that team did not visit Wuhan.

The WHO panel includes experts from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan, Qatar, Germany, Vietnam and Russia.

Dr Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s emergency program, said the team met with their Chinese counterparts at Zoom on Oct. 30, with regular calls since then.

“We hope and have assurances from our colleagues in the Chinese government that the journey … will be facilitated as soon as possible so that the international community can be assured of the quality of the science,” Dr. Ryan told The Telegraph.

“ We need to start where we find the first cases, and that’s in Wuhan in China, and then we need to follow the evidence wherever it leads us, ” he added.

“We fully expect and have assurances from our colleagues in the Chinese government that the trip … will be facilitated as soon as possible so that the international community can be assured of the quality of the science.”

Scientists believe that Covid-19 originated in bats and then jumped to another animal that acted as an intermediate host before making the jump to the human population.

The recent outbreak of a mutated strain of Covid-19 found in mink has shown that small mammals are carriers of the disease.

And experts believe that this may have been the case in Wuhan, possibly of animals sharing caves with bats in southern China or in Laos or Vietnam, across the border.

Pangolins were touted as the possible intermediate host at the beginning of the crisis. But a study published this week all but dismissed this theory after researchers testing the anteater in Southeast Asia found that none tested positive for the virus.

WHO ARE THE 10 SCIENTISTS WHO WILL BE SENT TO WUHAN?

Included in the lineup is England’s former deputy chief medical officer, John Watson

John watson

Epidemiologist and former deputy chief medical officer

Peter daszak

Zoologist and Chairman of the New York-based group, EcoHealth Alliance

Marion koopmans

Virologist and head of the Virology Department of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam

Farag El Moubasher

Infectious Disease Expert at the Qatari Ministry of Public Health

Hung nguyen

From the Human and Animal Health Program of the International Livestock Research Institute, based in Vietnam

Thea Kølsen Fischer

Infectious Disease Expert at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark

Fabian Leendertz

Epidemiologist at the Robert Koch Institute in Germany

Dominic dwyer

Virologist and based at Westmead Hospital in Sydney

Ken maeda

Veterinary Microbiologist from the National Institute of Infectious Diseases of Japan (NIID)

Vladimir Dedkov

Epidemiologist of the Pasteur Institute of Russia