WUHAN, China (AP) – The coronavirus most likely first appeared in humans after jumping from an animal, a team of international and Chinese scientists looking for the origin of COVID-19 said Tuesday. alternative theory that the virus from a Chinese leak laboratory was unlikely.
Peter Ben Embarek, the leader of the WHO mission, closely followed a visit by experts from the World Health Organization to Wuhan, the Chinese city where the first coronavirus cases were discovered.
But it “added details to the story,” he told a news conference as the group paid a four-week visit to the city.
And this has enabled the joint Chinese-WHO team to further investigate the laboratory lexicon theory – which was proposed by former US President Donald Trump and officials of his government without evidence – and decided that it is unlikely. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is home to many different virus samples, leading to allegations that it may have been the original outbreak, either intentionally or accidentally.
Embarek, an expert on food safety and animal diseases from the WHO, said experts considered the possibility of such a leak now so unlikely that it would not be suggested as a way of future study. But another team member, Danish scientist Thea Koelsen Fischer, told reporters that team members could not rule out the possibility of further investigation and new clues.
China has already strongly rejected the possibility of leakage and has promoted other theories. The Chinese and foreign experts have considered various ideas about how the disease first landed in humans, leading to a pandemic that has now killed more than 2.3 million people worldwide.
Embarek said the initial findings suggest that the virus that followed the virus was probably from a bat to another animal and then to humans, and would investigate further.
“The findings suggest that the hypothesis of laboratory incidents is highly unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus to the human population,” he said.
When asked why Embarek said that accidental releases are extremely rare, and that the team’s investigation into the laboratory operations of the Wuhan Institute indicates that it will be difficult to escape anything from it.
He also noted that nowhere before the pandemic were there any reports of this virus in any laboratory. Liang Wannian, the head of the Chinese side, also stressed this, saying there is no sample of it in the Wuhan Institute.
The mission was intended as a first step in the process of understanding the origin of the virus, which scientists have suggested may have been transmitted to humans by a wild animal, such as a pangolin or bamboo rat. Embarek also transmitted directly from bats to humans or through the trade in frozen food products.
The visit of the WTO team is politically sensitive to Beijing, which is concerned about the blame for alleged mistakes in the early response to the outbreak. An AP investigation has found that the Chinese government sets limits on the investigation into the outbreak and orders scientists not to talk to reporters.
Yet one member of the WHO team, British-born zoologist Peter Daszak, told The Associated Press last week. that they enjoyed a greater degree of openness than they expected, and that they had full access to all premises and staff they requested.
Koelsen Fischer said she could not see the raw data, and that she had to rely on an analysis of the data presented to her. But she said that would be true in most countries.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price said the US was looking forward to seeing the report and the underlying data from the WTO inquiry.
The team – which includes experts from ten countries who arrived on January 14 – visited the Huanan seafood market, the site of an early group of cases in late 2019.
Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist in the team, said that some animals on the market are susceptible or presumably susceptible to the virus, including rabbits and bamboo rats. And some can be traced to farms or dealers in regions where the bats carry the closest related virus than those that cause COVID-19.
She said the next step would be to take a closer look at farms.
Liang, the head of the Chinese team, said the virus apparently also spread to parts of the city other than the market. It therefore remains possible that the virus originated elsewhere.
The team found no evidence that the disease had spread widely before the initial outbreak in the second half of December 2019.
“We have not yet been able to do the full research, but there is no indication that there were bunches before what we saw happening in Wuhan later in December,” Liang said.
The visit of the WTO team took months to negotiate. China only agreed to this in May amid international pressure at the WHO World Health Assembly, and Beijing continued to oppose requests for a rigorously independent inquiry.
While China has endured several local revivals of infections since the outbreak came under control last year, life in Wuhan itself has largely returned to normal.
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Associated Press authors Ken Moritsugu in Beijing and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.