Sign up for our special edition newsletter to get a daily update on the coronavirus pandemic.
A scientist who led the Chinese World Health Organization team in investigating the origins of the coronavirus said the WHO will shelve the theory that the pandemic originated in a Wuhan lab when the United Nations health agency issues a report in the coming weeks.
Liang Wannian, who headed up the Chinese portion of the joint WHO-China team, said the experts reached a consensus on the beginnings of the novel coronavirus.
While many questions about the disease are yet unanswered, Liang said the earliest case was recorded on Dec. 8, 2019, and the Huanan food market played a role in allowing it to spread, but the experts agree that the virus is of “natural origin.”
“The most likely transmission route was from the natural host to the intermediate host, and then to humans,” he told the Chinese Communist Party-controlled Global Times in an interview published Wednesday.
“It is extremely unlikely that the outbreak was caused by a laboratory leak,” he said the team concluded.
Researchers work in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. Chinatopix via APNo future examinations will be “focused on this area, unless there is new evidence,” Liang said.
He said the experts from 10 countries visited hospitals, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Huanan seafood market, and talked with medical and laboratory personnel, scientific researchers, managers, community workers, people who recovered from the disease and family members of health-care providers who died fighting the pandemic.
