GENEVA, Switzerland (CU)_The WHO team due to investigate the origins of COVID-19 has been denied entry to China, as the organization’s emergencies chief Mike Ryan said that two members have already departed from China, as one member had already returned home, while the other is in transit in a third country.
According to the international health agency, the issue was a lack of visa clearance, although Beijing finally agreed to the long-awaited probe in December last year, after months of negotiations with the WHO.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “very disappointed” that China had not yet finalised permission for the team’s arrival, since he had been assured by Beijing that officials are speeding up the internal procedure for “the earliest possible deployment”.
The COVID-19 virus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in 2019, and therefore, “the mission is a priority for WHO and the international team”, Ghebreyesus said.
After several months of negotiations with Beijing, the WHO has been working on sending a 10-person team of international experts to China, in order to investigate on the origin of the pandemic and how the virus was first transmitted to humans. It was initially believed that the virus originated in a “wet market”, usually a large collection of open-air stalls selling fruits and vegetables, fresh seafood and meat. However, some wet markets also slaughter live exotic animals and sell them for meat. This was where the virus is suggested to have made a leap from animals to humans, although the exact origins of the virus still remain deeply contested.
