After a 12-day visit, a World Health Organization mission to Wuhan appeared no closer Tuesday to solving the mystery of the pandemic’s origins, reiterating that the coronavirus likely spread to humans from an animal and casting doubt on theories it leaked from a lab.
The group’s findings — more than a year after the initial outbreak and after months of wrangling between China and the U.N. health agency — could be a small step toward understanding the roots of a global crisis.
The update is unlikely to satisfy U.S. officials and others around the world calling for greater transparency from China — and is unlikely to silence questions about whether the Geneva-based WHO is equipped to investigate at all.
At a news conference, the team of Chinese and international researchers said they found that the virus was spreading in Wuhan during December 2019 both inside and outside the Huanan Seafood Market. That suggested the market was not necessarily the original source of the outbreak, the scientists said.
The team also left open the possibility that the virus may have been transmitted to humans through frozen food — a once-fringe theory that Chinese officials have been touting as part of broader push to claim that covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, did not come from China.
Notably, the WHO team dismissed as “extremely unlikely” another theory that the virus leaked from laboratories at the local Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Peter Ben Embarek, the Danish food safety expert leading the WHO team, said his group was satisfied with answers about safety at the WIV and will not recommend further investigation into the possible links to the lab.
“Just saying that they have really good safety protocols is not an answer in my view,” said Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who was not among the scientists on the trip. “That alone does not put my mind at rest.”
It was never likely that the team would reach a definitive conclusion after two weeks in quarantine and less than two weeks of on-site investigation. But the dismissal of the lab theory, in particular, is likely to draw scrutiny.
Most researchers believe the virus passed through an intermediary animal host — such as pangolins — and evolved into a form that is easily transmissible among humans. – Washington Post
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