A team of experts led by the World Health Organization investigating the origins of COVID-19 visited Huanan Market, the now-closed wholesale seafood hub in china’s Wuhan city, where the new coronavirus was first detected on Sunday.
The team arrived in Huanan amid increased security, with more open-air barricades, a blue fence surrounding the market, and left in convoy after about an hour. Experts did not answer journalists’ questions.
Since its approximately 40 weeks on Thursday, the team has visited hospitals and markets, as well as an exhibition commemorating Wuhan’s war with the virus, which included a city closure for 11 million days for 76 days.
“Visits to very important sites today: a wholesale market first and the Huanan seafood market right now. Very informative and essential for our joint groups to perceive the epidemiology of COVID as it began to spread at the expiration of 2019,” said Peter Daszak. , member of the Twitter team.
WHO, which has sought to manage mission expectations, said Friday that team members would attend tours organized through their Chinese hosts and that they would have no contact with network members due to physical fitness restrictions.
A full schedule for the team’s two-week box painting was not announced and the hounds that covered the tightly controlled layover in were kept away from team members.
The public of Huanan’s giant seafood wholesale market has been limited since it closed early last year.
Before its closure, the market was filled with stalls divided into sections for meat, seafood and vegetables, today it is a landmark in a traumatized city as the original epicenter of what the pandemic has.
On December 31, 2019, after 4 cases of mysterious pneumonia were connected to the market, it closed overnight and, by the end of January, Wuhan had entered a 76-day blockade.
Experts say the Huanan market still plays a role in localizing the origins of the virus, as the first case was identified.
WHO-led research in Wuhan has been plagued by delays, considerations and disputes between China and the United States, which have accused China of obscuring the scope of the initial outbreak and criticizing the situations of the visit, in which Chinese experts conducted the first. investigation phase.
The origins of the virus have become heavily politicized and some Chinese diplomats and the state media have subsidized theories that the virus is potentially local in some other country.
The team was due to arrive in Wuhan earlier in January, and the delay in its stopover in China provoked widespread public complaints from the then WHO chief of the United States, accused President Donald Trump of being “china-centered. “
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