The World Health Organization (WHO) officials say there will be no fast investigation or quick answers into the origins of the novel pathogen originated in China, AFP reported.
The WHO mission has started its investigation in Wuhan, China, however, the officials asked to be patient. In fact, starting the investigation more than one year after the pandemic began is not optimal, but the mission is progressing well.
The difficult question and a deep study aim to explore how the COVID-19 virus first jumped from animals to humans before killing millions worldwide since it first emerged in Wuhan in December 2019.
For the WHO, Wuhan mission becomes the politically sensitive trip, which Beijing had delayed throughout the first year of the pandemic. However, it has started, and the researchers need to be patient. Everyone needs time and effort to understand the importance of the discovered data, said Nguyen-Viet, co-leader of the Animal and Human Health Program at Nairobi’s International Livestock Research Institute. He is accompanying the WHO team in its investigation in Wuhan.
“Obviously it is ideal to do the study at that time or right after,” Nguyen-Viet said during the recent Zoom video. He admitted that the mission felt the global political pressure and tried to downplay expectations of any quick results.
The WHO mission wants facts and figures about the covid virus
Since arriving in Wuhan, the WHO team has been to a number of key sites — including hospitals that treated early covid-19 patients and the Huanan seafood market where the first cluster of pathogen emerged.
On Wednesday, the group visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology — another much-watched spot since its high-security lab has been linked with a number of conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus.
Scientists suppose the novel pathogen originated in bats and was likely transmitted to people via another mammal.
