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Coronavirus pandemic

Coronavirus lab leak unlikely, animal transmission key theory — WHO

The expert group thinks that the coronavirus was passed on to humans from an intermediary animal host, the head of the WHO mission to Wuhan told a special briefing

Head of the WHO mission to Wuhan Peter Ben Embarek AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

Head of the WHO mission to Wuhan Peter Ben Embarek

© AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

BEIJING, February 9. /TASS/. The World Health Organization (WHO) mission believes that the theory that COVID-19 has laboratory origins is "extremely unlikely." The expert group thinks that the coronavirus was transmitted to humans from an intermediary animal host, head of the WHO mission to Wuhan Peter Ben Embarek told a special briefing about the mission’s findings Tuesday.

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According to him, the experts had four main theories which could potentially explain the way the virus jumped into humans: direct transmission from animal to human or "direct zoonotic spillover," transmission via intermediary species, transmission from frozen food and a possible lab-related accident.

"Initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway," Ben Embarek underlined, adding, "The findings suggest that the laboratory incidents hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus to the human population."

WHO mission to Wuhan

WHO experts arrived in Wuhan to study the origins of the novel coronavirus on January 14, 2021. After they arrived, they were placed on a two-week quarantine, during which they held video calls with their Chinese colleagues. During their mission, the experts visited the Huanan Seafood Market where the early outbreak in December 2019 was recorded, several infectious disease hospitals and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Earlier, the WHO stated repeatedly that the search for a source of the novel coronavirus should start with the Chinese city of Wuhan. In the summer of 2020, two experts visited China in order to prepare the main mission. As a result of the trip, WHO and Chinese experts drafted a document on the research and the program of activity of the international group led by the WHO.

In late December 2019, Chinese officials informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe. On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.

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