WHO experts arrive in China to probe COVID-19 origins

AKIPRESS.COM - n advance team from the World Health Organization (WHO) has arrived in China to prepare an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, Voice of America reported. The virus that causes COVID-19, which is believed to have started in animals before jumping to humans, first emerged in a since-shuttered wholesale market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
Two Geneva-based WHO experts, specialists in animal health and epidemiology, will meet their Chinese counterparts in Beijing on Saturday to "develop the scope and terms" of the inquiry, said Tarik Jašarević, a WHO spokesperson.
"The objective is to advance the understanding of animal hosts for COVID-19 and ascertain how the disease jumped between animals and humans," Jašarević told VOA.
"That's why we're sending an animal health expert ... to look at whether or not it jumped from species to a human and what species it jumped from," WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said at a Friday press briefing in Geneva.
"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," she said.