A team of World health Organization experts visit the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research on Feb. 3, 2021, to investigate the origin of the new coronavirus, as a large number of security personnel stand guard on the outskirts of the Wuhan Virus Institute.
A delegation of World Health Organization experts and a joint Chinese investigation team held a news conference in Wuhan on Tuesday on their investigation into the traceability of the new coronavirus, and some of the conclusions they announced sparked widespread concern around the world. Strikingly, the possibility of a laboratory leak was ruled out, while the Chinese side’s long-identified cold-chain Food transmission of the virus did not seem to be dismissed by WHO experts. However, U.S. State Department spokesman Price said on Sept. 9 in response to the WHO investigation, “I don’t think anyone with common sense would say that the new coronavirus originated anywhere else.”
Laboratory leak problem
Wuhan Institute of Virus Research P4 laboratory virus expert Shi Zhengli and her group had sampled a large number of samples from a bat cave in Yunnan, so after the outbreak of the new coronavirus took the lead in Wuhan, there have been constant claims that the virus came from a laboratory virus leak, and in addition to the Trump administration’s clear support for the claim that the Wuhan virus was caused by a virus leak, some scientists have said that the possibility of a laboratory leak cannot be completely ruled out.
The Chinese military’s dispatch of experts to take over the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research shortly after the outbreak of the New crown outbreak also added further doubt.
However, the WHO expert panel largely ruled out the possibility of a laboratory leak. Danish scientist Peter Ben Embarek, one of the three experts present at the press conference and a member of the WHO expert panel, said at the press conference that based on the panel’s investigations at the Wuhan Institute of Virus, and its interactions with researchers, it concluded that the possibility of a leak from the institute was minimal. He denied the possibility of further investigation into the hypothesis that the laboratory leak triggered the outbreak.
Liang Wannian, former director of the Department of Institutional Reform of China’s National Health Construction Commission and head of the Chinese team of experts who attended the press conference, said the Wuhan Institute of Virus had no new crown virus at all before the outbreak and therefore no possibility of leaking the virus.
Whether cold-chain food spreads the virus
Following the second wave of outbreaks in China in recent months, authorities have targeted frozen meat imports from abroad, making the claim that foreign imports of cold-chain food into China are an important channel for the spread of the virus, a hypothesis that AFP commented was constantly mentioned in the Chinese media because it helped to solidify Chinese claims that the virus originated in a foreign country. But the World Health Organization has been clear on this issue for some Time, arguing that there is no evidence that cold-chain food can transmit the virus.
Somewhat surprisingly, Ambarek’s statement on Tuesday seemed to contradict the WHO’s usual view by referring to the “possibility” of the virus being transmitted “through cold-chain food”, and that it was inconclusive whether the virus had been transmitted to humans in this way. He argued that whether frozen wildlife in seafood markets can transmit the virus under certain conditions warrants further investigation.
Intermediate hosts
The panel believes that the bat virus is closely related to the new coronavirus, but cannot identify its virus as the direct ancestor of the new coronavirus.
Ambarek said at the conference that the most likely theory of how the new coronavirus is transmitted to humans remains that it is transmitted from an animal as an intermediate host, but that the identity of this intermediate host “is still not clear.
Ambarek said the pandemic was caused by a natural reservoir of viruses carried by bats, but how to pass to humans through intermediaries, but still need to “do more research and more specific and targeted research.
The Role of Seafood Markets in South China
After the December 2019 outbreak of New Crown in Wuhan, authorities pointed to the Wuhan South China Seafood Market as the initial source of infection. The market sells a large number of live animals, but Ambaruk argued that the “exact role” of the market in spreading the new crown virus “remains unclear.”
But Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans, who attended the press conference, believes that the rabbits, ferrets and bamboo rats sold at the market could still be “potential suspects.
No evidence of virus transmission in Wuhan until December
The official date of the outbreak in Wuhan is recognized by China as the end of December 2019, but an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine by experts from the Chinese CDC noted that Wuhan has had patients since December 8, and that many of these patients had no contact with the South China Seafood Market. In addition, Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital experts in a paper mentioned cases a week earlier, considering the incubation period of the virus, presumably the virus should have appeared at least in mid-November or earlier in December.
However, Liang Wannian, the Chinese head of the joint investigation team, said there was no evidence that the outbreak had spread in Wuhan before December 2019. Ambaruk’s statement at the press conference was close to the official Chinese version, saying that no evidence was found to suggest that the new coronavirus emerged in Wuhan before December.
Ambaruk’s use of the word “not found” was met with many questions before the WHO panel went to China: one key question was what else could the WHO experts find when they were allowed to go to China to investigate the outbreak a year after it began in Wuhan.
Unpredictable investigation process
The WHO team of experts in Wuhan is investigating the source of the new coronavirus, and finding out how the virus was transmitted to humans is considered essential to prevent a new pandemic. However, Chinese authorities have been trying for a year to block access to Wuhan, China, by virus experts, epidemiologists and animal experts. Worse, for months, Chinese authorities have been taking an overt or covert approach to deliberately spread fog over the source of the virus.
AFP reported that the investigation was sensitive from the beginning, the last indication being that the WHO announced to the outside world that the press conference of the panel of experts would take place at 16:00 local time, but this was delayed by half an hour at the request of the Chinese authorities, and the final press conference started again as late as 17:30.
This meant that an element of unpredictability pervaded the WHO investigation operation until the end.
After a year’s delay in getting China’s consent for WHO experts to go to Wuhan to investigate, WHO Director General Denis Tan made a rare public expression of “disappointment” in January when the panel was forced to delay its mission by a week due to a request from the Chinese side. In fact, some international experts were already on their way to China by plane.
The team finally arrived in Wuhan on Jan. 14, and the investigators, like all visitors from foreign countries, were quarantined for 14 days under Chinese rules.
At the end of the two-week quarantine, travel back and forth by bus was a cloud of reporters, but the experts had no possible access to other Wuhanites. The experts were interviewed by tweet as well as by phone.
Panel member Peter Daszak, president of the U.S. Ecological Alliance and a U.S. zoologist who has had several scientific collaborations with the Chinese, said Friday that the experts could go anywhere they wanted to see. Daszak reportedly has a close working relationship with Wuhan Virus Institute, with which he has published more than two dozen papers in the last 15 years, and has funded research on bat coronaviruses at Wuhan Virus.
But another expert, Thea Fischer, told the press Tuesday that she could not get the “raw data” she wanted from China, lamenting, “I have to trust the vast amount of data they have already analyzed.
After the WHO panel released its findings, it is unclear to what extent it will dispel questions about the Chinese government’s “opaque” or even “cover-up” handling of the outbreak.
A White House spokesman said Tuesday that the Biden administration looks forward to reviewing the findings and data released by the World Health Organization.
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