{"id":313602,"date":"2021-02-09T16:10:44","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T15:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=313602"},"modified":"2021-02-09T16:16:08","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T15:16:08","slug":"who-mission-to-china-fails-to-find-source-of-coronavirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=313602","title":{"rendered":"WHO mission to China fails to find source of coronavirus"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
\nThe WHO mission to China to uncover the origins of the coronavirus failed to identify the source of a pandemic which has swept across the world, but the team Tuesday ruled out the Wuhan lab-leak theory propagated by Donald Trump.
\n
\nExperts believe the disease \u2014 which has killed more than 2.3 million people worldwide \u2014 originated in bats and could have been transmitted to humans via another mammal.
\nWHO foreign expert Peter Ben Embarek said identifying the animal pathway remains a \u201cwork in progress\u201d, adding the absence of bats in the Wuhan area dimmed the likelihood of direct transmission.
\nIt was \u201cmost likely\u201d to have come from an intermediary species, he said, before backing up China\u2019s position that there was no evidence of \u201clarge outbreaks in Wuhan\u201d before December when the first official cases have been recorded.
\nLiang Wannian, head of the China side of the joint mission, said animal transmission remained the likely route, but \u201cthe reservoir hosts remain to be identified\u201d.
\nBen Embarek also quashed the theory that a leak from a virology lab in Wuhan could have caused the pandemic.
\n\u201cThe laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely,\u201d he said, adding it \u201cis not in the hypotheses that we will suggest for future studies\u201d.
\nThe mission was a diplomatically knotty one \u2014 presaged by fears of a whitewash \u2014 with the US demanding a \u201crobust\u201d probe and China firing back with a warning not to \u201cpoliticise\u201d the investigation.
\nThe WHO experts spent a month in China including two weeks in quarantine.
\nLiang said studies showed the virus could be \u201ccarried long-distance on cold chain products\u201d, appearing to nudge towards the possible importation of the virus \u2014 a theory that has abounded in China in recent months.
\nBeijing is desperate to defend criticism of its handling of the chaotic early stages of the outbreak.
\nIt has refocused attention at home \u2014 and externally \u2014 on its handling and recovery, and also floated the theory the virus emerged abroad and was brought into China possibly via frozen foods.
\nReporters were largely kept at arms\u2019 length from the experts during their closely-monitored visit, but snippets of their findings crept out via Twitter and interviews.
\nBut, already over a year after the virus emerged, some of it was of questionable relevance to their stated aim of finding the virus source \u2014 including a visit to a propaganda exhibition celebrating China\u2019s recovery from the pandemic.
\nThe group spent just an hour at the seafood market where many of the first reported clusters of infections emerged over a year ago.
\nThey also appeared to spend several days inside their hotel, receiving visits from various Chinese officials without venturing out into the city.
\nDeeper research was carried out at the Wuhan virology institute where they spent nearly four hours and said they met with Chinese scientists there including Shi Zhengli, one of China\u2019s leading experts on bat coronaviruses and a deputy director of the Wuhan lab.
\nScientists at the laboratory conduct research on some of the world\u2019s most dangerous diseases, including strains of bat coronaviruses similar to Covid-19.
\nFormer US president Donald Trump frequently repeated a controversial theory that a lab leak may have been the source of the pandemic.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The WHO mission to China to uncover the origins of the coronavirus failed to identify the source of a pandemic which has swept across the world, but the team Tuesday ruled out the Wuhan lab-leak theory propagated by Donald Trump. Experts believe the disease \u2014 which has killed more than 2.3 million people worldwide \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":313603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14571,3],"tags":[14052,1968,14051],"class_list":["post-313602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-news","tag-corona-virus","tag-who","tag-wuhan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/313603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}