WHO Sends Team To Wuhan To Investigate Other Possible Outbreaks Of Corona Virus

Photo illustration (Macau Photo Agency / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - The World Health Organization (WHO) research mission to China is expected to start in January 2021, when a team from WHO arrives. The team will investigate how the coronavirus jumped from animals to humans. The team will also look into the possibility of the virus appearing earlier or in a different place than previously thought

Quoting The Guardian, Thursday, December 17, a biologist at Germany's Robert Koch Institute, Fabian Leendertz, along with the mission team of ten said they would work with Chinese scientists for four to five weeks. Most scientists think the Sars-Cov-2 virus originated in an animal in China, most likely a bat, before jumping on to humans.

The COVID-19 case was first discovered in Wuhan City at the end of December 2019 and has been linked to a seafood market. More than 73.4 million people have been diagnosed with the virus and 1.63 million have died.

The WHO team will look at stored medical samples and X-rays from before the first known outbreak to see if the virus spread earlier than expected. The WHO team will also take samples from bats and other species to try to trace the animal where the virus first emerged.

"Then to see where the line is taking us, whether it is another city or whether it remains in Wuhan or where it is going," said Leendertz. He also added that it is possible that the seafood market in Wuhan was "only the first major event or one of the first."

“The big scope is trying to find out what happened. How the virus jumped from which animal might be the intermediate host and then to humans. To reconstruct the scenario, "said Leendertz.

Apart from the quarantine on arrival, Leendertz said he was not aware of any restrictions on the team. He also emphasized that all the research being carried out was not to find out who was at fault from the pandemic. "There will be reports from that mission, but I'm pretty sure (it) won't give a complete answer," he said.

“It's really not about finding the guilty country. It's about trying to understand what's going on and then seeing if based on that data, we can try to reduce the risk in the future, "explains Leendartz.

The source of the virus is the subject of conspiracy claims and accusations of closing the COVID-19 case. The issue has also sparked diplomatic strife, particularly between the United States (US) and China. Early attempts by Chinese authorities to cover up the outbreak, including detaining journalists and punishing doctors, and reluctance to allow the WHO or others to investigate inside China only added to year-round animosity.

The WHO briefly sent a research team to China in July to help understand "how the virus started." Chinese authorities and state media have recently stepped up campaigns showing that the virus did not originate in China, including reports of the virus being previously present in Italy. However, the researchers themselves labeled these claims as propaganda.

"All available evidence suggests that the coronavirus did not start in Wuhan, central China," The People's Daily said in a social media post.

Michael Ryan, director of the health emergencies program at the WHO said it would be highly speculative to argue that the disease is not emerging in China. "It is clear from a public health perspective that you are starting investigations where the human cases first emerged."

The WHO itself has faced accusations that they were too "nice" to China in the early months of the emergence of COVID-19. The WHO accepted claims later proved to be untrue including claims of no human-to-human transmission, which delayed the world to respond.