‘Interesting day’ for WHO Covid-19 team at China’s Wuhan virology lab

Name: WHO team probing coronavirus origins in China visits Wuhan wet market at epicentre of virus outbreak
Uploaded: 2021-02-03T03:01:56.000Z
Duration: 1 min 51 s
Description: WHO team probing coronavirus origins in China visits Wuhan wet market at epicentre of virus outbreak

Research institute has been at the centre of conspiracy theories, rejected by most scientists, that new coronavirus emerged there

Expert moves to dampen expectations of early findings and asks for patience

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WHO investigative team members Peter Daszak and Thea Fischer arrive at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in central China as part of their quest to find the origin of the new coronavirus. Photo: Reuters

ReutersandAgence France-Presse

Published: 11:01am, 3 Feb 2021Updated: 9:52am, 5 Feb 2021

The World Health Organization’s team of investigators visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology in central China on Wednesday morning as part of their hunt for clues to the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The experts spent about 3 1/2 hours at the heavily-guarded Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been at the centre of some conspiracy theories that claim a laboratory leak caused the city’s first coronavirus outbreak at the end of 2019.

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WHO team probing coronavirus origins in China visits Wuhan wet market at epicentre of virus outbreak

Most scientists reject the hypothesis, but some speculate that a virus captured from the wild could have figured in lab experiments to test the risks of a human spillover and then escaped via an infected staff member.

“Very interesting. Many questions,” Thea Fischer, a Danish member of the team, called from her car as it sped away, in response to a question about whether the team had found anything.

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WHO team sees data ‘no one has seen before’ during Covid-19 origin investigation in Wuhan, China

Some scientists have called for China to release details of all coronavirus samples studied at the lab, to see which most closely resembles Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes the respiratory disease.