The 13-member WHO New Coronavirus Traceability Expert Group is scheduled to visit the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research today, which is the most high-profile location for the virus traceability work. Since the outbreak of the virus is suspected to be leaked from the outside world, the progress of the investigation work of experts is concerned.
The Central News Agency quoted Peter Daszak, one of the WHO’s international experts, as retweeting a tweet on Tuesday, saying the expert team plans to visit the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research on Wednesday, in addition to visiting the national biosafety laboratory, the WHO expert team will also conduct “international scientific cooperation exchanges” with experts from the Wuhan Institute.
The Central News Agency said that since the outbreak of 2019 coronavirus disease since the end of 2019 from China’s Wuhan, the outside world has been suspicious that “the virus may have leaked out from the Wuhan Institute of Virus Laboratory, leading to a global pandemic”. Luc Montagnier, a Nobel Prize-winning French virologist, said in April 2020 that the virus that triggered the outbreak should be an “accidental product” of the Wuhan laboratory’s development of an AIDS vaccine, but the claim was refuted by several scientists.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump also said in late April 2020 that he had “seen evidence that the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research”. However, German media “Der Spiegel” later reported that the German Defense Ministry and the Federal Intelligence Service privately questioned the claim that the virus disease originated from a Chinese laboratory, arguing that the U.S. side was trying to divert attention from its lack of Epidemic prevention.
In addition, WHO has said that scientists have told them that the virus is “natural in origin” based on genomic sequencing.
A team of WHO experts arrived in Wuhan in mid-January and began an approximately two-week field trip after the 14-day quarantine ended on Jan. 28, with the goal of determining the route of infection in early cases to help build hypotheses based on scientific evidence that could serve as the basis for future long-term research.
The team traveled to meet with staff at Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, where the initial confirmed cases were treated, on January 30, and arrived at the South China Seafood Market on January 31, one of the first places where clusters of infections emerged more than a year ago, while a site visit to the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research was the most high-profile trip, with much attention paid to the progress of the expert investigation.
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