New Delhi (NVI) It is “extremely unlikely” that the coronavirus pandemic began from a laboratory in Wuhan, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) team that visited the Chinese city to investigate the origins of coronavirus pandemic.
The investigators have ruled out the theory regarding origin of Covid-19 from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan that has so far been regarded as the epicentre of the pandemic that has claimed millions of lives so far.
LIVE from Wuhan : Media briefing on #COVID19 origin mission https://t.co/WGpRGsd8vE
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) February 9, 2021
“On the basis of serious discussion and very diligent research, we have reached the extremely unlikely conclusion. As regards the hypothesis of lab leak, there are two possible pathways if there was one. First the virus was engineered by humans but this hypothesis has already been refuted by the whole scientific community around the world. Second, there may be a leak of the virus from the lab, but in terms of the leaking of the virus, there should be leaking of an existing or no virus.
“However, in all the laboratories in Wuhan, there is no existing virus of SARS-CoV-2. If there is no existence of this virus, there will be no way that this virus would be leaked. So, in addition, in all the laboratories in Wuhan including WIV, they upheld a very stringent and high quality management system, and also preceding from the current evidence, we regard the lab leak hypothesis is extremely unlikely,” said Liang Wannian in a lengthy press briefing.
Wannian headed the Chinese group that has been investigating the origins of the pandemic along with a team of experts from WHO.
He said that coronavirus may have jumped from animals to humans but is still unclear which species transmitted it first. There is no indication of the transmission of the Sars-Cov-2 in the population of the period before Dec 2019, he said, adding that there was “not enough evidence” to determine if the virus had spread in the city prior to that.
Also present at the press briefing, Ben Embarek, head of the WHO team investigating the origin of virus in China, said that the focus of the study is whether coronavirus had ‘previous history’ and was circulating earlier than December 2019.
-ARK
