WHO expert says Wuhan lab leak ‘very unlikely’ as COVID source

The head of the World Health Organization-led team of experts investigating the origins of COVID-19, Peter Ben Embarek, said on Tuesday that it was “very unlikely” that the source of the Coronavirus pandemic was due to a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. 

The team has in the past two weeks visited a number of locations in the central Chinese city where the virus first emerged.

One facility visited was the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been the subject of a number of conspiracy theories that claim a lab leak caused the city’s outbreak.

In a summary of their investigation, Embarek said the Coronavirus is unlikely to have leaked from a Chinese lab and most probably jumped to humans via an intermediary species.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology has collected extensive virus samples, leading to unproven allegations that it may have caused the original outbreak by leaking the virus into the surrounding community. 

China has strongly denied that possibility and has promoted unproven theories that the virus may have originated elsewhere.

Along with the institute, the WHO team that includes experts from 10 nations has visited hospitals, research institutes, a traditional market tied to the outbreak and other sites.

According to ABC, the visit by the WHO team took months to negotiate after China only agreed to it amid massive international pressure at the World Health Assembly meeting last May, and Beijing has continued to deny calls for a strictly independent investigation.

Chinese authorities have kept a tight hold on information about the possible causes of the pandemic that has now sickened more than 105 million people and killed more than 2.2 million worldwide, ABC reported. 

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