WUHAN,
China
Experts believe the
disease — which has killed more than 2.3 million people worldwide — originated
in bats and could have been transmitted to humans via another mammal.
World Health
Organisation foreign expert Peter Ben Embarek said identifying the animal
pathway remains a “work in progress”, and the absence of bats in the Wuhan area
dimmed the likelihood of direct transmission.
It was “most likely” to
have come from an intermediary species, he said. He also backed up China’s
position that there was no evidence of “large outbreaks” in Wuhan before
December when the first official cases were recorded.
Animals such as
rabbits, ferrets and bamboo rats could be the intermediary, another team member
Marion Koopmans added, saying they might be an “entry point” for further
investigations.
Liang Wannian, head of
the China side of the joint mission, said animal transmission remained the
likely route, but “the reservoir hosts remain to be identified”.
Ben Embarek quashed the
theory that a leak from a virology lab in Wuhan could have caused the pandemic.
“The laboratory
incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely,” he said. It “is not in the
hypotheses that we will suggest for future studies”.
The mission was a
diplomatically knotty one — presaged by fears of a whitewash — with the US
demanding a “robust” probe and China firing back with a warning not to
“politicise” the investigation.
The WHO experts spent a
month in China including two weeks in quarantine.
Liang said studies
showed the virus could be “carried long-distance on cold chain products”,
appearing to nudge towards the theory the virus was imported — an idea that has
abounded in China in recent months.
Ben Embarek said “the
virus can persist and survive in conditions that are found in these cold and
frozen environments”.
“But we don’t really
understand if the virus can then transmit to humans and under which conditions
this could happen,” he said.
Beijing is desperate to
defang criticism of its handling of the chaotic early stages of the outbreak.
It has tried to refocus
attention on its handling and recovery while floating the theory that the virus
emerged abroad and was brought into China possibly via frozen foods.
Koopmans said the next
steps could include searching for “earlier circulation” of the virus.
Reporters were largely kept at arms’ length from the experts during their closely-monitored visit, but snippets of their findings crept out via Twitter and interviews.
Questions have been asked about the relevance of some of their activities to their stated aim of finding the virus source — including a visit to a propaganda exhibition celebrating China’s recovery from the pandemic.
The group spent just an
hour at the seafood market where many of the first reported clusters of
infections emerged over a year ago.
They also appeared to
spend several days inside their hotel, receiving visits from various Chinese
officials without venturing out into the city.
Research was carried
out at the Wuhan virology institute where they spent nearly four hours. They
met with Chinese scientists there including Shi Zhengli, one of China’s leading
experts on bat coronaviruses and a deputy director of the Wuhan lab.
Scientists at the
laboratory conduct research on some of the world’s most dangerous diseases,
including strains of bat coronaviruses similar to Covid-19.
Former US president Donald Trump frequently repeated a controversial theory that a lab leak may have been the source of the pandemic.
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