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Geneva:
An advance group from the World Health Organization (WHO) has left for China to organise an investigation into the origins of the novel coronavirus which sparked the worldwide pandemic, a spokeswoman stated on Friday.
The virus is believed to have emerged in a wholesale market within the central Chinese metropolis of Wuhan late final 12 months, since then closed, after leaping the species barrier from the animal kingdom to contaminate people.
The two WHO consultants, 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 informed a U.N. briefing in Geneva.
“They have gone, they are in the air now, they are the advance party that is to work out the scope,” she stated.
This would contain negotiations on points together with the composition of the fuller group and what abilities had been wanted, she added.
“One of the big issues that everybody is interested in, and of course that’s why we’re sending an animal health expert, is to look at whether or not it jumped from species to a human and what species it jumped from,” Harris stated.
“We know it’s very, very similar to the virus in the bat, but did it go through an intemediate species? This is a question we all need answered,” she stated.
The WHO may have no function in an impartial panel, introduced on Thursday, to assessment the worldwide dealing with of pandemic, Harris stated, including: “From now on it is completely hands off”.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo have stated it might have originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, though they’ve offered no proof for this and China strongly denies it. Scientists and U.S. intelligence companies have stated 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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