WHO Mission Finds COVID-19 Is ‘Extremely Unlikely’ to Have Originated from Wuhan Lab

(WUHAN, China) — The coronavirus most likely first appeared in humans after jumping from an animal, a team of international and Chinese scientists looking for the origins of COVID-19 said Tuesday, dismissing as unlikely an alternate theory that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab. A closely watched visit by World Health Organization experts to Wuhan—the Chinese city where the first coronavirus cases were discovered — did not dramatically change the current understanding of the early days of the pandemic, said Peter Ben Embarek, the leader of the WHO team. But it did “add details to that story,” he said at a news conference as the group wrapped up a nearly four-week visit to the city. And it allowed the joint Chinese-WHO team to rule out one theory on the origins of the virus. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has collected many virus samples, leading to allegations that it may have been the source of the original outbreak, whether on purpose or accidentally. But experts now consider the possibility of such a leak so improbable that it will not be suggested as an avenue of future study, said Embarek, a WHO food safety and animal diseases expert. China had already strongly rejected that possibility and has promoted other theories. The Chinese and foreign experts considered several theories for how the disease first ended up in humans, leading to a pandemic that has now killed more than 2.3 million people worldwide. Embarek said the initial findings ...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 wire Source Type: news