The team of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) tasked with investigating the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus will arrive in China on Thursday, January 14, after both sides overcame access problems in the country of this mission they clashed with last week.
In a brief statement posted on its website, China’s National Health Commission indicates that WHO technicians will arrive in the Asian country on the 14th and will “cooperate” with local scientists in these investigations.
The Commission does not specify where the members of this “priority” mission for WHO, made up of scientists from various international organizations in the United States, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Australia and Vietnam, will travel. , Germany and Qatar.
According to the Hong Kong South China Morning Post, “The mission is expected to last six weeks, including in quarantine.” (to which the members of the research team will be subjected).
The aim is to find the possible animal origin of SARS-CoV-2 and its channels of transmission to humans.
DO YOU COME FROM OTHER COUNTRIES?
Although the initial theory is that it has spread through a fresh produce and animal market in Wuhan, Chinese official media have promoted an alternative narrative in recent months that says the outbreak could be caused by frozen food from other countries.
From the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, spokesman Zhao Lijian said today at the daily press conference that “tracking the origin of the coronavirus is likely to involve more countries with greater knowledge about the virus. WHO will have to conduct similar investigations in other countries and regions. “
In this regard, an expert in respiratory diseases, quoted by the nationalist nationalist daily Global Times, said the WHO team “I will probably visit other countries where the coronavirus appeared before China,” an idea that the official Chinese press is trying to spread.
The source says that China was “the first country to detect it” and that Beijing is therefore “in charge of helping the WHO conduct investigations.”
Controversy over arrival
The arrival of the WHO team in China sparked controversy last week after WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “very disappointed” by the obstacles Beijing is putting in the mission, although Chinese authorities have denied it. to put obstacles.
Several members of the team had begun their trips to China in the early days of the year, but Tedros regretted that Beijing had not “completed the necessary permits.” for access to the Asian country, which recorded the world’s first outbreak of covid in the central-eastern city of Wuhan in the last days of December 2019.
Scientists who could not access China were forced to return to their home countries until the situation was resolved.
However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry described the situation as a “misunderstanding”, assuring last week that “there has never been a problem in cooperation” with WHO and that the organization knew “perfectly” that it was not just “a problem”. visa “, to which he added that both sides were still preparing the visit and negotiating its dates.
TOO LATE?
This unforeseen event has added new doubts to the existing ones regarding the transparency of the Chinese authorities regarding the virus, as well as on the delay of the mission, as more than a year has passed since its emergency in Wuhan.
Last Saturday, the deputy director of the National Health Commission, Zeng Yixin, expressed his support for the mission, although he stressed that the times remain to be coordinated.
Although WHO experts already visited China for this purpose in February and July last year – without revealing too many details -, The organization of this mission has been postponed for months and has been surrounded by secrecy, both by that body and by the Chinese authorities.