WHO virus probe in China narrows down on bats, discounts lab theory

Agencies | Beijing

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

More research is needed to find out whether the novel coronavirus originated in bats in China or in another country, an expert group led by the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday at the end of a month-long investigation in China.

The most likely hypothesis that has emerged is that the virus came from an animal species, moved to a second intermediary species and jumped to humans, WHO animal disease expert Peter Ben Embarek told a press conference in Wuhan, where the Covid-19 disease was first detected in December 2019.

Scientists from China, 10 other countries and UN organizations spent the past weeks visiting markets, health facilities and laboratories in and around Wuhan to find the source of the pandemic, dpa reported.

Although they did not reach any definite conclusions, they have all but ruled the possibility that the virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory.

Embarek said that the "laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus into the population," given that none of the laboratories in the area had been working with such a virus.

The WHO scientist stressed that further investigations should not only focus on China but on other countries in Asia and beyond.

More work needs to be done to sample bats and other possible host species abroad, he said.

Embarek also pointed out that the virus may have been introduced to Wuhan by travellers or through frozen wild animal products from other Chinese regions or countries.