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The World Health Organization, WHO, is sending a group of prominent researchers to China.
Mission: find out where the corona virus came from.
First stop: Wuhan Animal Markets.
It started with a strange flu in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. The sars-cov-2 virus then spread like wildfire around the world. This is the common perception about how the coronavirus originated.
But does the covid-19 really come from Wuhan?
A group of WHO researchers will find out now, reports the scientific journal Nature.
Photo: Christopher Black / TT
WHO: General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
A new phase began
This summer, a first group of experts was dispatched to China to develop a virus detection plan. Once the plan was completed, the next phase began and now a group of international public and animal health researchers, epidemiologists, virologists and other experts are working to detect the virus.
A first meeting of experts was held on October 30, according to the WHO. Who is part of the group is kept secret until now.
The first task of researchers, or virus detectives, is to find out which animal transmitted the infection to humans.
The first stop is the Wuhan animal markets, despite the fact that various theories about the origin of the pandemic now indicate that the virus could have originated elsewhere. In Wuhan, researchers will examine the animals sold in the markets and try to find out how they were shipped through China and other countries.
Photo: Anthony Kwan / Getty Images
Fish market in Wuhan.
Photo: Anthony Kwan / Getty Images
Köttmarknad Wuhan.
Has begun
The main suspects for virus detectives are cats and minks, which have been shown to be highly sensitive to the coronavirus. But they will also examine raccoons, foxes, and deer.
Researchers will also review hospital records in Wuhan to find out if the virus spread in the area before December 2019. They will also interview the first people who were diagnosed with the coronavirus in Wuhan. Parts of that work should already have begun, according to Nature.
Outside china
While Wuhan is still considered the epicenter of the virus, the WHO warns that the investigation of its origin can be expanded.
“Where an epidemic is first detected does not necessarily reflect where it started,” the WHO wrote in a report.
The statement could refer to a research report, which has not been peer-reviewed, showing that the coronavirus was present in wastewater in Spain as early as March 2019.
According to another new study, the coronavirus was found in Italy as early as September 2019. That discovery was made when researchers looked at blood samples from volunteers in a lung cancer study. 111 of the total 959 participants were found to have antibodies against the virus. Just over 14 percent of them already had antibodies as of September last year, writes the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
Blood samples for the study were taken between September 2019 and March 2020. Positive test results came mainly from people from the Lombardy region.
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