WUHAN, China (AP) – World Health Organization researchers looking for clues to the origin of the coronavirus in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, said the Chinese side has provided a high degree of cooperation, but warned against immediate results to expect from the visit.
“I keep saying we need to be realistic, a short mission like this won’t have all the answers, but it helps increase understanding of the #virusorigin #wuhan,” Hung Nguyen-Viet, co-leader of the Animal and Human Health Program from the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, said in a tweet Thursday.
In a previous tweet, zoologist and team member Peter Daszak praised Wednesday’s meetings with the staff of the main Wuhan Institute of Virology, including Deputy Director Shi Zhengli, a virologist who worked with Daszak to track down the origins of SARS that may have led to its origins. occurred in China and led to the 2003 outbreak.
“Extremely important meeting today with WIV staff, including Dr. Shi Zhengli. Frank, open discussion. Asked and answered important questions. Daszak tweeted.
The team spent about two hours of meetings with managers and residents at the Jiangxinyuan Community Administrative Center in Wuhan’s Hanyang District on Thursday. No details were given.
Official statistics show that there were at least 16 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the community last year among nearly 10,000 people living there when the virus broke out.
Previously, Daszak tweeted images from media outside the virology institute, saying, “Thank the press for their patience and interest in getting this news out to the world. The work is moving forward and we look forward to talking about the results as soon as possible. “
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has collected extensive virus samples, leading to unproven allegations that it caused the original outbreak by leaking the virus into the surrounding community. China has vigorously denied that possibility, promoting unproven theories that the virus may have originated elsewhere.
Together with the institute, the WHO team, comprising experts from 10 countries, hospitals, research institutes, visited a traditional market related to the outbreak and other locations.
Members of the team met with the institute’s researchers and management, experts, vendors, residents and media representatives, Chinese National Health Commission spokesman Mi Feng told reporters during a briefing on Thursday.
It will likely take years and multiple studies in many parts of the world to confirm the origin of the virus due to the extensive research, including animal sampling, genetic analysis and epidemiological studies required to determine the animal reservoir of an outbreak . One possibility is that a wild animal poacher passed on the virus to traders who brought it to Wuhan, but that has yet to be proven.
The first clusters of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan in late 2019, prompting the government to place the city of 11 million residents under a strict lockout of 76 days. China has since reported more than 89,000 cases and 4,600 deaths – most of them in Wuhan – with new cases largely concentrated in the northeast and local lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed to contain the outbreaks.
The number of new cases of local transmission dropped to just 17 on Thursday as the Chinese heeded the government’s call to skip family visits and stay during the Lunar New Year holiday later this month.
China has also gone ahead with a plan to vaccinate 50 million people against COVID-19 by mid-month. On Wednesday, more than 31 million doses had been administered, Mi told reporters.