February 05, 2021

Andrew Campbell 

A team of World Health Organization (WHO) investigators led by the Scientist Dr. Peter K. Ben Embarek from WHO's Department of Food Safety and Zoonoses joint with British zoologist, an expert on disease ecology on zoonosis, and President of the nonprofit non-governmental organization (NGO) EcoHealth Alliance Dr. Peter Daszak and Professor Thea Fisher in public health, virus infections and epidemics at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark is currently probing the conspiracy and speculation about the origin of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan.

The team visited the controversial laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology on January 3. The Wuhan lab is affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and is the only Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) lab in China equipped for the highest level of biocontainment. It was established in 2002 and 2003 to deal with the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic. The investigators also conducted their studies with virologist Shi Zhengli, known as China's Batwoman, and inspected her lab studies.

The WHO investigators, in particular, talked to locals and visited on January 31 Huanan Seafood Market, where pneumonia-like cases were first detected in late 2019 and regarded as the most probable origin of the novel coronavirus outbreak. However, Dr. Embarek reportedly has said that it was too early in their investigation to draw any conclusion.

The WHO team to China is part of global scientific cooperation with prominent Chinese epidemiologists on tracing the origins of COVID-19. Meanwhile, the novel coronavirus was detected in multiple places worldwide in late 2019, those scenarios reflect the necessity and urgency for conducting global origins studies in other countries and regions.

Photo:Webshot.