The World Health Organization (WHO) has rejected the theory that imported frozen foods triggered the initial outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan in December 2019, as suggested by Chinese authorities.
“The idea of importing the virus into China in these frozen foods is not something we are looking at,” said Peter Ben Embarek, WHO’s specialist for food safety and animal disease, at a news conference in Geneva on Thursday ( Switzerland). of the Wuhan research team.
According to the expert, the research team is now focusing its investigations on the fact that “local trade in frozen, wild farm animals, which are produced, especially in southern China”, could introduce the virus to the Wuhan market. “This is a very different discussion compared to international trade,” he said.
At a news conference in Wuhan last week, Liang Wannian, head of the COVID-19 expert group at the Chinese Ministry of Health, suggested that frozen products could act as a surface for the virus to be transmitted to humans or routes of transmission. . related to food.
Wannian recalled that in recent months, about 11,000 blood samples from animals in 31 Chinese provinces had been analyzed, and in all cases the COVID-19 test result was negative. The Chinese expert made this argument to suggest that the virus could be imported into China from other parts of the world, which Embarek did not completely rule out in that outbreak.
“We continue to work with the hypothesis that it could have been introduced by an infected person and then spread to other people on the market. But it could also be by introducing a product. Among the most interesting products were wild animals. Frozen. It is known that some of these species are susceptible to this type of virus, “said Embarek.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also stressed last week, in a meeting after the Wuhan press conference, that “all hypotheses remain open” about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 after the Chinese mission . “Some questions have been raised about the elimination of some hypotheses. After talking to some team members, I want to confirm that all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and study,” he said.