The WHO team of experts to investigate the origin of the coronavirus in China will hold a press conference on Tuesday

The World Health Organization (WHO) international team of experts who were in China last month to help investigate the origins of the coronavirus will meet with media in Wuhan on Tuesday.

“The international team working to understand the origins of the COVID-19 virus is ending their four-week stay in Wuhan, China, and with their Chinese colleagues will attend a press conference.”, the agency said on Monday.

The briefing, which will take place at 4:00 p.m. local time (8 GMT) at a city hotel, will be broadcast live and in English on the United Nations health agency’s digital and social media platforms.

The first cases of Covid-19 were detected in Wuhan in December 2019. Scientists believe the disease -which killed more than 2.3 million people worldwide- It is native to bats and could have been transmitted to humans from another mammal.

But so far there are no definitive answers, and senior WHO officials have played down the chances that the delicate fact-finding mission will find them the first time. They acknowledged that the visit to Wuhan would likely raise many more questions that need to be answered.

Last Wednesday, February 3, the group of researchers visited a major virus research laboratory in the city of Wuhan, looking for clues to the origins of the pandemic.

Experts spent around 3.5 hours in the very well-guarded Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been at the center of some conspiracy theories that a lab leak caused the city’s first coronavirus outbreak in late 2019.

Most scientists reject the hypothesis, but some believe that a virus caught in the wild could have been used in laboratory experiments to test for the risks of human contagion, and then escape via an infected staff member.

“Very interesting. Lots of questions”, he says from his car Thea fischer, a member of the Danish team, in response to a question whether the team had found something.

Some scientists have asked China to release details of all coronavirus samples studied in the lab, to see which one most closely resembles SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes respiratory disease.

WHO, which tried to manage the mission’s expectations, said its members would be limited to visits organized by their Chinese hosts and would not have contact with community members, due to health restrictions.

Although the new coronavirus that triggered the pandemic was first identified in Wuhan, Beijing has tried to question the idea that it came from China, targeting imported frozen foods as a channel.

After two weeks in quarantine, the WHO team – made up of experts in veterinary medicine, virology, food safety and epidemiology from 10 countries – have spent the last six days visiting hospitals, research centers and a traditional market linked to many ancient contagions.

The visit came after months of negotiations between Beijing and the United Nations agency as China seeks to maintain its grip on information about the virus and the investigation of its origins.

With information from AFP and Reuters

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