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WUHAN: A World Health Organization (WHO) team leaves China on Wednesday (February 10) after gaining new insights into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic that has now killed more than 2.3 millions of people around the world, but with the main questions still. unanswered.
The visit was politically sensitive for China, which is concerned about allegations that it did not properly handle the initial outbreak and has been closely watched around the world.
READ: US backs COVID-19 probe, distances itself from Wuhan lab theory
Team member Peter Daszak issued an upbeat note upon arriving at the airport at the end of the four-week trip to the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in December 2019.
“We have clear clues as to what the next steps should be,” he said. “We know much more after the work that has been done.”
The team’s main findings seemed to confirm what most researchers had already conjectured about the virus. The visit was never expected to definitively identify the origin of the pandemic, a company that, based on others, could take years.
READ: WHO mission to China does not find the source of the coronavirus
Here’s a look at the theories the team explored during their visit:
THE BATS
The mission to Wuhan did not change a major theory about the origin of the virus. Scientists think that bats are the most likely carriers and that they passed it on to another animal, which passed it on to humans.
While there are other possibilities, for example a bat could have directly infected a human, the path through a second animal remains the most likely scenario, according to the WHO team and their Chinese counterparts. The question is which animal and where.
Peter Ben Embarek and Thea Fischer of the World Health Organization team prepare to board a plane from the airport runway to depart at the end of the WHO mission in Wuhan, China, on Wednesday, February 10, 2021 (AP Photo / Ng). Han Guan)
THE MARKET
The Huanan Seafood Market, which had a cluster of cases at the beginning of the outbreak, was initially suspected as the place where people were first infected. The discovery of previous cases has practically ruled out that theory, but researchers still want to know how this early group happened.
The market mainly traded in frozen seafood, but it also sold domesticated wildlife. That included rabbits, which are known to be susceptible to the virus, and bamboo rats and ferret badgers, which are suspected of being susceptible.
READ: China adds more than 500 species to wildlife protection list
At the closing press conference of the WHO mission on Tuesday, a team member said that some of these animals have been traced to farms or traders in regions that host bats that carry the virus that is the closest known relative of the virus. that causes COVID-19. .
The virus could also have been introduced to the market by an infected person. Chinese health officials note that only the surfaces in the market tested positive for the virus, not any of the animal products.
A Chinese official said Tuesday that it appears that there were cases in other parts of Wuhan around the same time as the market group, so the transfer of the virus from animals to humans could have occurred elsewhere.
THE LABORATORY
The conclusion of the Chinese and international experts was that it is extremely unlikely that the virus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a laboratory with an extensive collection of virus samples.
Former US President Donald Trump and his administration officials were among those raising that possibility, prompting angry denials from China. Most experts have been skeptical about this.
In making their determination, the team said such leaks are extremely rare and there is no evidence that the virus existed in that laboratory or in any other laboratory in the world when the pandemic began.
He also reviewed the security protocols at the institute, leading the team to conclude that “it was highly unlikely that anything could escape from such a place,” said WHO team leader Peter Ben Embarek.
A worker wearing a mask watches from inside a hospital at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention after the World Health Organization team arrived for a field visit in Wuhan, in the province. Chinese central Hubei, Monday, February 1, 2021. (AP Photo / Ng Han Guan)
THE COLD CHAIN
The joint investigation left open the possibility that the virus has spread to humans through frozen food products, which comes as a bit of a surprise as foreign experts have generally downplayed the risk.
It is a theory that has been widely promoted by Chinese officials, who detected the virus in imported frozen food packages and took advantage of it to suggest that the virus could have reached China from abroad.
Marion Koopmans, a member of the WHO team, noted that she would not yet answer the question where the virus originally came from. “It is not the cold chain itself, that cannot be,” he said at the airport. “The virus has to come from somewhere.”
Peter Daszak of the World Health Organization exits in a car alongside a line of security personnel at the Hubei Center for Disease Control and Prevention after a field visit in Wuhan, Hubei province , in central China, Monday, February 1, 2021 (AP Photo / Ng Han Guan)
THE DATA
The mission has been haunted by questions about how much freedom China would give investigators to visit the sites and talk to the people they wanted.
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In the end, they seemed satisfied with the arrangements, at least in their public comments. Team member Thea Koelsen Fischer said she was unable to see the raw data and had to rely on an analysis of the data presented to her. But he said that would be true in most countries.
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