WHO team inspects virus lab in Wuhan

WUHAN: World Health Organization inspectors on Wednesday visited a laboratory in China’s Wuhan city at the heart of a controversial theory that it could have been the source of the coronavirus.

The inspection of the Wuhan virology institute, which conducts research on the world’s most dangerous diseases, will be one of the most-watched stops on the team’s probe into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The sensitive mission, which China had delayed throughout the first year of the international health crisis, has a remit to explore how the virus jumped from animal to human.

But questions remain over what the experts can hope to find after so much time has passed.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Hajiji says positive economic achievements prove Sabah govt’s commitment

Kota Kinabalu: Chief Minister, Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor, emphasised that the positive economic achievements over the past three years underscore the Sabah government’s steadfast commitment to both the administration and development of the state.

The convoy of cars drove past security to enter a virology institute shrouded in mist Wednesday morning. WHO team member Peter Daszak told reporters that the team was “looking forward to a very productive day and to asking all the questions that we know need to be asked”.

He later tweeted that it had been an “extremely important meeting today with staff” and a “frank, open discussion.”

Most scientists think Covid-19 — which first emerged in Wuhan and has gone on to kill more than two million people worldwide—originated in bats and could have been transmitted to people via another mammal.

But there are no definitive answers so far. The WHO experts stayed inside the institute for nearly four hours, before driving away without stopping to talk to media waiting outside.

Police in black uniforms and face masks lined the road to separate the crowds of reporters from the cars.

According to the state-run Global Times, the team also visited the P4 lab Asia’s first maximum-security lab equipped to handle Class 4 pathogens (P4) such as Ebola.

There was speculation early in the pandemic that the virus could have accidentally leaked from the biosafety lab in Wuhan, although there was no evidence to back up that theory.

Daszak said in his tweet that the team met Wednesday with Shi Zhengli, one of China’s leading experts on bat coronaviruses and deputy director of the Wuhan lab.

Shi raised some eyebrows in a June 2020 interview with Scientific American magazine in which she said she was initially anxious over whether the virus had leaked from the facility.

Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.

Daily Express Malaysia

But subsequent checks revealed that none of the gene sequences matched the viruses held by the lab, Shi said, adding: “I had not slept a wink for days.”

She later said she would “bet her life that (the new coronavirus) had nothing to do with the lab”, according to Chinese state media.

Try 1 month for RM 18.00

Try 1 month for RM 18.00

Try 1 month for RM 18.00