WHO Team to Visit China in January to Investigate into Origin of COVID-19
NEW DELHI, Dec 16: The World Health Organisation will send an international team to China to investigate the origin of Coronavirus. The proposed visit is expected in January, the WHO spokesman Hedinn Halldorsson confirmed on Wednesday.
He told the media that the expert team to finally go to China next month would include epidemiologists and animal health specialists.
The global call to investigate the origin of the virus, suspected to be in China’s Wuhan, has been echoed by scientists and medical experts as the scourage by coronavirus disease has claimed millions of lives and upended economies across the world.
The coronavirus first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December, 2019, before spreading across China, and triggering a global pandemic.
China has rejected the claims for almost a year now on the reports of virus originating from its central city. Recently, a top German biochemist quoted by Chinese state media as saying that the coronavirus did not originate in Wuhan.
China has repeatedly denied that it deliberately hid information about the spreading virus in January or earlier.
At the same time, Beijing, in the face of global criticism, has been trying to change the virus-origin theory and shift the blame outside. Several theories are in circulation – the origin could be the Indian subcontinent including India and Bangladesh or Saudi Arabia, Italy, the US and the US military, or imported frozen packaged food.
In August this year, the agency’s chief and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had said the “international team” will deploy to Wuhan, the city where the pandemic is believed to have erupted late last year. Tedros said “terms of reference” have been drawn up by the WHO and China, but a final decision was awaited.
(Manas Dasgupta)
