WUHAN, China (AP) – A World Health Organization team emerged from quarantine in the Chinese city of Wuhan on Thursday to begin fieldwork on a fact-finding mission into the origins of the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
The researchers, who had to isolate for 14 days after arriving in China, left their quarantine hotel with their luggage – including at least four yoga mats – in the middle of the afternoon and headed for another hotel.
The mission is politically charged, as China’s early response to the outbreak seeks to avoid blame for alleged wrongdoing. A big question is where the Chinese side will let the researchers go and who they can talk to.
Yellow barriers blocked the hotel entrance and kept media at bay. Before the researchers boarded their bus, workers wearing protective gear and face shields could see their luggage loading, including two musical instruments and a dumbbell.
The hotel staff waved goodbye to the investigators, who wore face masks. The bus driver wore a white protective suit all over the body. They drove about 30 minutes to a Hilton resort-like hotel on the lake.
Former WHO official Keiji Fukuda, who is not part of the Wuhan team, has warned not to expect breakthroughs and says it could be years before definitive conclusions can be drawn about the origin of the virus.
“This has now been over a year when it all started,” he said earlier this month. So much of the physical evidence will be gone. People’s memories are inaccurate, and it is likely that many places’ physical layouts will be different than they were. ”
Among the places they could visit are the Huanan Seafood Market, which was linked to many of the earliest cases, as well as research institutes and hospitals that treated patients at the height of the outbreak.
It has not been announced whether they will leave Wuhan. One possible source of the virus is bats in caves in rural Yunnan Province, about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) southwest of Wuhan.
State Department spokesman Zhao Lijian said the experts would hold talks, visits and inspections in China to conduct virus detection exchanges and cooperation. He has not provided details.
The mission came about after much arguing between the two sides that led to a rare complaint from the WHO that it was taking too long for China to make final arrangements.
China, which has strongly opposed an independent investigation that it could not fully verify, said the matter was complicated and Chinese medical personnel were seized with new virus clusters in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities.
Although the WHO was criticized early on, especially by the US, for not being critical enough of the Chinese response, it recently accused China and other countries of being too slow at the start of the outbreak, which on the Chinese side rare it could have been better.
Overall, however, China has vigorously defended its response, possibly out of concern about the reputation cost or even the financial cost of missing it.
Chinese officials and state media have also tried to cast doubt on whether the virus even started in China. Most experts believe it came from bats, possibly in southwest China or adjacent areas of Southeast Asia, before it was passed on to another animal and then to humans.
The search for the origin will try to determine where and how exactly that happened.
White House press secretary Zen Psaki on Wednesday expressed concern about what she called “disinformation” coming from China, adding that the US is backing a robust international investigation.
“It is imperative that we sort out the early days of the pandemic in China,” she said.
Zhao replied that any negative speculation and politicized interpretation of the mission is inappropriate.
“We hope the US can cooperate responsibly with the Chinese side, respect facts and science, and respect the hard work of the international expert team in tracing the origin of the virus,” he said, “so that they can undertake science. research into detecting viruses without any political interference. ”
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Associated Press photographer Ng Han Guan contributed to this report.