WHO investigators visit Wuhan seafood market as search for origins of coronavirus continues
- The Huanan market was linked to the earliest known cluster of Covid-19 cases, but its precise role in the outbreak has yet to be determined
- The team of scientists will spend a month in China as part of a long-delayed effort to trace the source of infections
A World Health Organization team has visited the seafood market linked to the earliest Covid-19 cases in Wuhan on the third day of field work in a long-awaited mission to China to investigate the origins of the pandemic.
A procession of vehicles carrying the team, made up of 14 scientists and WHO officials, was seen entering the barricaded Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market in midafternoon on Sunday.
The WHO last week confirmed that the market would be among the sites visited by the group, which is on a month-long mission to investigate how the coronavirus infected humans and began spreading in Wuhan, where it was first identified in late 2019.
Formerly a bustling shopping destination with hundreds of stalls, Huanan market was closed on January 1 last year after it was linked to a number of the earliest cases identified by doctors. It has not reopened and its precise role in the outbreak remains unclear.
The market, which sold wild animals in addition to seafood and produce, was originally considered a likely place for the new virus to have crossed over into humans.