WHO Pair Head To China For Virus Origin Scoping Mission

Mohammad Ali (@ChaudhryMAli88) Published July 10, 2020 | 06:17 PM

An epidemiologist and an animal health specialist from the World Health Organization were flying to China on Friday to try and identify the animal source of the new coronavirus pandemic

Geneva, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Jul, 2020 ) :An epidemiologist and an animal health specialist from the World Health Organization were flying to China on Friday to try and identify the animal source of the new coronavirus pandemic.

The WHO said the advance team would be in Beijing for the weekend as they lay the ground for a wider mission aimed at identifying how the virus entered the human species.

"They're in the air right now," WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told reporters in Geneva.

Harris said there was no set timeframe for their mission.

The novel coronavirus has killed at least 550,000 people and infected more than 12.1 million since it emerged in China last December.

Scientists believe the killer virus jumped from animals to humans, possibly from a market in the city of Wuhan selling exotic animals for meat.

Chinese officials said early in the outbreak that the virus may have spread from a market in the city, which sold live and wild animals, but no further confirmation of that has been revealed.