A member of the WHO expert panel suggested that virus traceability efforts would require an investigation of the genetic composition of the virus inside the bat cave. This is a new request from the WHO experts to Chinese authorities to visit sensitive sites.
The panel visited the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research on Wednesday, which has been at the forefront of the controversy over the origin of the virus. It is suspected that the pandemic of the new coronavirus that has wreaked havoc around the world was caused by a leak, intentional or not, from the institute.
Shortly after the outbreak, Chinese authorities had the military take over the institute and tightly regulate and control the personnel and facilities involved in virus research. There are reports that the bat cave where Shi Zhengli, the deputy director of the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research who headed the new coronavirus research, used to conduct investigations has also been cordoned off, prohibiting outsiders from entering without the approval of the Chinese authorities.
The WHO team of experts has had several disputes with Chinese authorities over the route of this investigation and arrangements for the location of the visit. Beijing does not want the WHO operation to be tainted by a retrospective investigation of the virus against China, insisting that the investigation be described as a “collaboration” between experts from both sides rather than an “investigation. China also did not want the investigation team to enter sensitive sites such as the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research, the Wuhan Seafood Market and the Bat Cave.
The WHO has repeatedly complained that Beijing has created various reasons to delay the team’s trip. After many arguments, Beijing agreed that the WHO expert team would carry out the activities under the leadership and arrangement of Chinese experts. Observers have pointed out that the officially arranged reception in China is in fact a case of the Chinese authorities assigning all the receptionists and having them read to the visitors according to a set tone, denying them access to the real situation.
Peter Daszak, a WHO zoologist and animal disease expert who is currently conducting field investigations in Wuhan, China, said the group saw information in Wuhan about a global pandemic caused by a virus found there in late 2019. Daszak said there is now no evidence that the virus came from a laboratory.
Many countries, including the United States, have criticized China for its opaque response in the early days of the outbreak, and Beijing has been promoting the idea that the virus did not originate in Wuhan but came from elsewhere.
Dazak was involved in research that traced the Sars virus from 2002 to 2003, finding that it originated in a bat cave in China’s Yunnan province.
Dazak, who now serves as president of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, said, “If we’re going to find the true wild source of the new coronavirus, we should be doing similar research.”
In an interview with Reuters, Dazak said, “It’s very important to look for possible sources of bats and things like that because we need to find the source of these deadly viruses to be able to reduce human contact with these animals.”
Dazak said the WHO panel learned new material in Wuhan about the virus causing the pandemic. But he was not specific about that.
The WHO expert said, “I saw scenes where they conveyed information that looked more credible than before.”
One scenario that the WHO team looked at more closely is that the virus may have started spreading long before it was discovered in Wuhan.
“This is something our team is looking at very carefully in order to understand just how far the virus had spread in the community before,” Dazak said.
Dazak said, “What we’re really doing here is tracing the virus from the first detected case back to the reservoir of the virus in the wild, which is a very winding road that can take months, if not years.”
The team visited several hospitals, research facilities and the seafood market in Wuhan where the outbreak first occurred.
Dazak said Chinese authorities did not deny the panel’s request to visit the facilities or interview any key people.
But from the beginning, the WHO panel tried to lower outside expectations for the outcome of this investigation. In a tweet sent Thursday, Hung Nguyen-Viet, the WHO panel’s Vietnamese-born expert and head of the animal and human health program at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, said, “I’ve been saying all along that we need to be pragmatic and that a short investigation like this one won’t find all the answers, but it can help us deepen our understanding of the virus that originated in Wuhan s understanding.”
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