WHO detected a surprise in Wuhan with the first coronavirus outbreak

So said the head of the WHO mission, Peter Ben Embarek, in an interview with CNN, which also reiterated the demand for access to hundreds of thousands of blood samples taken in the Chinese city and which Beijing has so far not allowed them to examine. “The virus was widely distributed in Wuhan in December, which is a new finding,” he pointed.

A first report on the findings of the mission is expected to be released next week and presented at a press conference in Geneva.

Last week, the expert Liang wannian, whose joint commission with the World Health Organization (WHO) investigating the origin of the virus in Wuhan is headed by China, said the coronavirus, which causes Covid-19 disease, could come from an animal, but for the moment the specific species has not been identified.

“Discovery of viral sequences with high homology to Sars-Cov-2 suggests that it could be of zoonotic origin” said the expert, who clarified that, according to these findings, it should be excluded that the infection could come from a laboratory error.

“There is not enough evidence … to determine whether Sars-Cov-2 spread to Wuhan before December 2019.”, He said Liang Wannian, head of the delegation of Chinese scientists, at a press conference. It was in Wuhan that the first cases of Covid-19 were recorded in December 2019. Since then, the coronavirus has killed more than 2.31 million people worldwide and 106 million people are infected.