WHO Mission Chief Reflects on China Trip to Seek the Origin of COVID-19
The World Health Organization (WHO) mission to China to probe the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic had a bumpy start, so it’s perhaps no surprise that the team’s departure from China didn’t go entirely smoothly either. A 9 February press conference in Wuhan to summarize the mission’s findings was widely hailed within China but criticized elsewhere.
During the press conference, WHO program manager and mission leader Peter Ben Embarek and team member Marion Koopmans praised China’s cooperation during the 4-week investigation. They said it was “extremely unlikely” that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a Chinese laboratory and said the team would not investigate that hypothesis further. But they kept open the possibility that the virus arrived in Wuhan on frozen food, a route promoted aggressively by Chinese media to suggest the virus was imported from elsewhere in the world.
