A team of world experts researching the origin of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, did not rule out the possibility of a virus leak from the laboratory. Reported by the Mirror.
Experts working on behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO) have completed their visit to a major virus research laboratory in the Chinese city that became the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak a year ago. The team of scientists spent nearly four hours at the well-guarded Wuhan Institute of Virology trying to figure out how the first person contracted the disease, which has killed more than 2.2 million people worldwide to date.
British scientist Dr. Peter Daszak said the researchers are getting data “that no one has seen before.” He also stressed that everything “really got off the ground.” Despite the fact that the Wuhan laboratory has denied claims that the outbreak at the end of 2019 was due to an internal leak of the virus, in his first interview since arriving in the country, Dr.Dashak said that such a theory was not excluded.
“If there is data that points to a hypothesis, we will follow the data, we will follow the evidence to which it leads us. If they lead us to the seafood and cold chain market, we will follow. If they take us to a wildlife farm or bird markets, we will go there. If they lead us to the laboratory, we will go there. Everything is considered, and we remain impartial, ”the scientist said.
China has been accused of hiding the outbreak, trying to silence doctors who tried to raise the alarm, and belatedly informing the world about what happened. The PRC was also blamed for obstructing an external investigation into the origin of the virus. Beijing, in turn, tried to question the Chinese origin of the virus, pointing to the import of frozen food as a channel.
Construction of the Wuhan laboratory began in 2003 following an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), referred to in the media as SARS.
