WHO experts research the origin of the coronavirus in Wuhan

An international team of 13 experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) begins this Thursday, in Wuhan their mission on the ground to investigate the origin of the coronavirus at the end of the mandatory 14-day quarantine they spend in a hotel in the city.

Nail complicated mission – punctuated by delays and clashes between China and the United States – but which may be essential in independently investigating the origin of the first known cases of the virus which continues to plague humanity.

Wuhan was the first place in the world where the pathogen was identified at the end of 2019 and here international scientists will follow the first infections, supposedly linked to the Huanan fish and seafood market, where they were also sold. wild animals.

All the assumptions

“All the assumptions are on the table and it is too early to come to a conclusion on the exact origin of the virus, whether inside or outside of China,” the director of WHO health emergencies, Mike Ryan.

The international research team deployed in Wuhan, made up of WHO staff and other international scientists, includes experts from the United States, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Denmark , Germany, Australia, Vietnam and Qatar.

It is led by Danish Peter Ben Embarek, the Geneva-based organization’s leading expert on animal-borne diseases.

It also includes other renowned specialists, such as the Dutch virologist Mariom Koopmans, the microbiologist and veterinarian German Fabian Leendertz or the zoologist Britain’s Peter Daszak, who investigated the coronavirus of bats in China.

Daszak said in a Twitter message from the Wuhan quarantine hotel on Wednesday that in the early stages, after detecting the outbreak in the city in late December, Chinese experts were “intensely focused on dealing with the chaos” of diseases and of deaths, which he considered “normal” in a response to an outbreak.

“I spoke to many Chinese colleagues at the time. They were all working frantically on the epidemic. I’m not saying they didn’t want help, but wildlife research it was not a priority amid the rapidly evolving “epidemic, he said in another post.

The zoologist stressed that they are working so that in future outbreaks scientists can be on the ground as soon as an outbreak occurs to better understand its origins and causes.

International experts will visit Huanan market with Chinese scientists, always closed for over a year, and other key places in the city such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its maximum security laboratory P4.

Political conflicts

Donald Trump’s administration insisted for months, if not days before the end of his mandate, that the virus had left this laboratory in the capital of Hubei.

On January 17, the State Department claimed to have “new evidence” that from there by declaring that the laboratory researchers they got sick in the fall of 2019, although he provided no evidence to prove it.

China, for its part, has called Washington’s statements “lies and conspiracy theories” and through the official press has repeatedly pointed out that the virus had already been detected in the fall of 2019 in several countries, far from the Asian giant.

Some Chinese scientists have also hinted that it could have reached China via imported frozen products other countries, where it has detected traces of the virus frequently for a long time.

“The official position of the Chinese government is that the search for the origin is a very serious scientific question. We must rely on scientists and medical experts to come to a conclusion based on science and facts,” the official said recently. spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hua Chunying.

WHO’s chief of mission said his team will study the hypothesis that the virus had escaped from a laboratory, “although it is unlikely.”

“There is no evidence to date that anyone has worked with the virus in the past; there is no evidence that they could have somehow escaped the virus. laboratory, but of course We will consider it when we look for the origin of this virus, ”said Ben Embarek in a video released by the WHO this month.

The vast majority of the international scientific community agrees that the virus has most likely reached humans of nature, not from a lab.

The mission also plans to examine hospital records in Wuhan or collected sewage samples and blood donations, as well as visits to wildlife farms and interviews with the first patients, who were detected between December 9 and 12, according to authorities Chinese.

China did not detail what will show to international experts, who, before traveling, admitted that they still did not have a clear picture of the progress of the investigation in this Asian country.

“Sitting at a table together makes sense,” said Leendertz, a microbiologist who in 2014 identified the bat-infested tree in West Africa where the outbreak likely originated. Ebola virus.

The horseshoe bat, the prime suspect

Much of the scientific community attributes the origin of SARS-CoV-2 to horseshoe bats, which inhabit many parts of the world and are numerous in Asia.

The genetic material of the coronavirus causing the pandemic is 96.22% that of the coronavirus RaTG13, isolated in a horseshoe bat in the southern Asian country by Chinese scientists.

From the bat, some believe the virus could be transmitted directly to humans and others believe it did so through a third animal, like the pangolin or the snake.

There are also those who consider that the virus could adapt to humans for a long time until it reaches its high transmission capacity and the current contagion.

Patient zero

The WHO team must first identify the patient zero and from there pull the thread to check which of these assumptions is correct, although it will likely take more missions and several months.

The WHO is also investigating information indicating the outbreak of the virus in other locations before doing so in China, although that does not invalidate the fact that they are starting their mission in Wuhan.

“This is a big puzzle of 10,000 pieces and you can not complete the picture by seeing only one, ”summarized the director of health emergencies of the WHO.

The author is a journalist for EFE