Coronavirus: WHO will send ‘advance team’ to China in hunt for source of Covid-19

Name: ‘We cannot beat this virus with ideologies’ - World Health Organisation
Uploaded: 2020-07-02T17:00:11.000Z
Duration: 1 min 59 s
Description: ‘We cannot beat this virus with ideologies’ - World Health Organisation

Animal health expert and specialist in epidemiological field investigations to be part of ‘scoping mission’

World Health Organisation says a larger international inquiry is expected to follow

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Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, did not say when the two specialists would leave for China. Photo: Reuters

Simone McCarthy

Published: 1:00am, 3 Jul 2020Updated: 3:48am, 3 Jul 2020

The World Health Organisation has said it will send two experts to China to lay the groundwork for an international mission to investigate the origins of the coronavirus causing the Covid-19 pandemic.

An animal health expert and a specialist in epidemiological field investigations from the WHO’s Geneva headquarters are expected to be part of an “advance mission” to China, the organisation said on Wednesday.

“That is a scoping mission and we do expect then, in collaboration with colleagues in China, to define a larger international mission,” executive director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme Mike Ryan said at a regular press briefing.

Ryan did not say when the two specialists would leave, but WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday said the organisation would next week send a team to China, where the virus was first identified six months ago in the city of Wuhan.

“We can fight the virus better when we know everything about the virus, including how it started,” Tedros said.

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‘We cannot beat this virus with ideologies’ - World Health Organisation

The WHO has not said when a larger international investigation will begin, even as Covid-19 has spread across the world, so far killing more than half a million people and infecting over 10 million. While most scientists agree the virus likely came from bats via an intermediary animal, the search for the origin has become entangled in a politicised blame game.