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A two-member advance group of World Health Organization (WHO) specialists has left for China to organise an investigation into the origins of the novel coronavirus behind a pandemic that has killed greater than 550,000 individuals globally, the UN company mentioned on Friday.
The virus is believed to have emerged in a wholesale market within the central Chinese metropolis of Wuhan late final yr after leaping the species barrier from the animal kingdom to contaminate people.
The two WHO specialists, specialists in animal well being and epidemiology, will work with Chinese scientists to find out the scope and itinerary of the investigation, WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris mentioned, declining to call them.
“We know it’s very, very similar to the virus in the bat, but did it go through an intermediate species? This is a question we all need answered,” Harris instructed a information briefing.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus later instructed a information convention: “Two WHO experts are currently en route to China to meet with fellow scientists and learn about the progress made in understanding the animal reservoir for COVID-19 and how the disease jumped between animals and humans.”
He added, “This will help lay the groundwork for the WHO-led international mission into the origins.”
COVID-19 is the respiratory illness brought on by the virus.
The United States, the WHO’s largest WHO donor, this week notified the company that it was withdrawing in a yr’s time after accusing it of being too near China and never doing sufficient to query Beijing’s actions initially of the disaster.
“We view the scientific investigation as a necessary step to having a complete and transparent understanding of how this virus has spread throughout the world,” Andrew Bremberg, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, mentioned in a press release to Reuters.
“We expect that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) will offer the team of scientists full access to data, samples, and localities, and look forward to its timely report,” Bremberg mentioned.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have mentioned the pathogen might have originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, though they’ve introduced no proof for this and China has denied it. Scientists and U.S. intelligence businesses have mentioned it emerged in nature.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
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