Feb, 10th 2021 – The covid-19 virus may have not originated from a market in Wuhan, China as explained by international experts of the World Health Organisation (WHO). Head of the WHO mission, Peter Ben Embarek said that more work was needed to identify the source of the virus as another expert said the focus could shift to South East Asia.
The investigation has uncovered new information but has not dramatically changed the picture of the outbreak as 106 million people contracted the virus and 2.3 million people succumbed to it. The Experts now believe the virus is likely to have originated in animals, before spreading to humans.
Whether on purpose or accidentally, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has collected many samples making allegations that it may have been the source of the outbreak. China had earlier on rejected this possibility, promoting other theories.
Embarek said that the findings showed that the virus came from the bat, through another animal then to a human. He said, “In terms of understanding what happened in the early days of December 2019, did we change dramatically the picture we had beforehand? I don’t think so. Did we improve our understanding? Did we add details to that story? Absolutely.”
He added, “The findings suggest that the laboratory incidents hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus to the human population.”
According to head of the Chinese side, Liang Wannian, the virus was spreading rapidly in other areas other than the market which concludes that it did not originate from the market.
The team, according to reports did not find any evidence that the disease was spreading widely prior to the initial outbreak mid December 2019.
Liang said, “We haven’t been able to fully do the research, but there is no indication there were clusters before what we saw happen in the later part of December in Wuhan.”
WHO is hoping that the information of the earlier cases could help identify how the outbreak came to be in order to prevent future pandemics.