WUHAN, China (AP) – A World Health Organization team examining the origins of the coronavirus pandemic visited the seafood market in China’s Wuhan city on Sunday, which was associated with many early infections.
Team members visited Huanan’s seafood market for about an hour in the afternoon, and one of them raised his thumb when reporters asked how he was doing.
The market place was the site of a virus outbreak in December 2019. Scientists first suspected that the virus came from wild animals sold at the market place. how the virus has spread so much.
“Visits to very important sites today – a wholesale market first and the Huanan seafood market right now,” said Peter Daszak, a zoologist with the US EcoHealth Alliance and a member of the WHO team, in a tweet. “Very informative and mandatory. We have for our joint organizations to perceive the epidemiology of COVID as it began to spread in late 2019. »
Earlier in the day, team members were also seen walking through sections of Baishazhou Market, one of Wuhan’s largest and rainiest market spots, surrounded by a giant entourage of Chinese officials and representatives. locked up last year.
Members, with experience in veterinary medicine, virology, food protection and epidemiology, visited two hospitals at the center of the early epidemic: Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital and Hubei Hospital for Western medicine and Integrated China.
On Saturday they visited a museum exhibition committed to the beginnings of COVID-19 history.
The project has been politically burdened as China seeks to avoid being blamed for alleged wrongdoing in its immediate reaction to the epidemic.
A single scale through scientists is unlikely to verify the source of the virus. Determining the animal reservoir of an epidemic is a comprehensive company that requires years of research, adding animal samples, genetic research and epidemiological studies.
One option is that a poacher of wild animals transmitted the virus to investors who transported it to Wuhan. The Chinese government has promoted theories, with little evidence, that the epidemic may have only with imports of frozen shellfish infected with the virus, a fully rejected perception. through scientists and foreign agencies.
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Soo reported from Hong Kong.