WHO Team To Visit China To Investigate The Origin Of Coronavirus

Amid allegations that China delayed information concerning the novel coronavirus, the World Health Organization is finally sending a team to China next week to prepare to investigate the source of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist, WHO told that a “thorough investigation” needs to be done into the origins of the virus. She said that the WHO has been working with the Chinese government for the visit. “A team is going to China next week to investigate the origins of the virus.

Swaminathan further added that the Chinese government had revealed an episode of “ordinary pneumonia cases” from Wuhan on December 31. Our WHO nation office in China got it and on January 1, WHO actuated its universal instruments which we do as a feature of global wellbeing guidelines at whatever point there’s any new sign gets announced. It is passed on to everybody with the goal that the entire world thinks about it. We don’t know more than that in the sense where and how it started. We know from the infection arrangements that it is fundamentally the same as bat infections. A lot of studies have been done in South-East Asia to show that bats have loads of coronaviruses, she said.

WHO has been saying that knowing the source of the virus is very, very important. It’s science, it’s public health. We can fight the virus better when we know everything about the virus, including how it started, WHO Director-General TedrosAdhanomGhebreyesus said in a media briefing. We will be sending a team next week to China to prepare for that and we hope that that will lead to understanding how the virus started and what we can do for the future to prepare. So we’re planning to send a team next week, he said.

The visit will take place more than six months after the WHO’s Country Office in China picked up a statement from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission on cases of ‘viral pneumonia’. Earlier in January, Tedros had spoken on January 29 about an agreement with China to send a team ‘as soon as possible’ to better understand the disease and the outbreak.

US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier said that the virus might have originated in a laboratory in China. There have been reports of China deferring data and cautioning concerning the novel coronavirus which could have helped in containing its spread in the underlying days.