WHO Research Team To Travel To China In January To Investigate COVID-19 Origin

A team from the World Health Organisation (WHO) is expected to travel to Wuhan, China, in January to investigate the animal origins of unprecedented coronavirus. While speaking to Associated Press, Fabian Leendertz, a member of the WHO’s 10-person mission team, said that they will be working with Chinese scientists for four to five weeks. Leendertz added that the WHO team will look at stored medical samples and x-rays from before the first known outbreak to see if the virus was circulating earlier, and take samples from bats and other species to try track down the animal in which the virus first emerged. He said, “Then to see where that track leads us, if it’s another city or if it stays in Wuhan or where that goes”. Leendertz also added that it was possible that the Wuhan market was “just the first mega-spreading event or one of the first”. He said, “The big scope is to try and find out what happened. How the virus jumped from which animal to perhaps an intermediate host and then to humans. To reconstruct the scenario”.