WHO team to visit Wuhan to investigate original source of COVID-19

An expert team of the World Health Organisation (WHO) is set to travel to China to investigate the original source of SARS-CoV 2, the virus that causes covid-19.  The World Health Organisation on Thursday informed that a team of investigators will travel to China in January to help investigate the origin of the virus that killed millions.

During a press conference, Babatunde Olowokure, the WHO's regional emergencies director in the Western Pacific, said that the organisation was in talks with Beijing over where the investigators would travel to within the country.

Assembled by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the team of 10 experts to start its search next month in Wuhan, the city where the outbreak was first reported.

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Team member Fabian Leendertz, a biologist at Germany's Robert Koch Institute who specialises in emerging diseases, said the four-to-five-week mission was not about assigning blame, but about understanding how to better handle future outbreaks.

The World Health Organisation, however, has said it believes the virus to be zoonotic, therefore being transmitted to humans from an animal, potentially through an intermediate source.

Leendertz said one of the lines of inquiry for his team would be into the seafood market in Wuhan, which has been repeatedly highlighted during the pandemic as a potential early starting place.

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