Peter Ben Embarek, head of the WHO delegation which has just conducted an investigation in Wuhan, during a press conference on Tuesday, February 9.

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Hector RETAMAL / AFP

After a four-week stay in Wuhan, China, the international team of Chinese experts and the WHO announced on Tuesday that they had been unable to unravel the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, deeming the theory to be "highly improbable". '' a leak from a laboratory but failed to identify the animal responsible for the disease.

Transmission of the coronavirus from a first animal and then a second before contamination to humans is the "most likely" hypothesis, said Peter Ben Embarek, head of the WHO delegation who has just conducted an investigation in Wuhan , the cradle of the epidemic, in central China.

An intermediate animal not yet identified

However, this track requires "more specific and targeted research", he added.

If only because if transmission from an animal is probable, it has "not yet been identified," said Liang Wannian, head of the delegation of Chinese scientists.

Since the first cases of Covid-19 reported in Wuhan, the pandemic has killed more than 2.3 million people worldwide.

"There is not enough evidence [...] to determine whether Sars-Cov-2 spread to Wuhan before December 2019," Liang Wannian said.

This mission on the origins of the transmission of the virus to humans, considered extremely important to try to better fight against a possible next epidemic, has struggled to put in place, China seeming very reluctant to let these global specialists come. from various disciplines such as epidemiology but also zoology.

"Need time and effort to understand"

The WHO had previously warned that it would be necessary to be patient before finding a possible answer.

"We are in a process and we need time and effort to understand" what happened, Dr Hung Nguyen-Viet, co-director of the program on human and animal health, told AFP. at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi.

The Chinese mission comes to an end as other WHO experts on Monday examined AstraZeneca's anti-Covid-19 vaccine, the effectiveness of which is now in question for the elderly and against the South African variant of virus.

The question also of the limited effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine

The AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine, which the United Kingdom was the first to administer massively to its population in December, has already been approved by several other countries and by the European Union.

But some governments have preferred to recommend it only for those under 65 or even 55, for lack of sufficient data on its effectiveness for the elderly.

On Sunday, South Africa suspended the start of its vaccination program, which was to take place in the coming days with a million AstraZeneca vaccines, after a study revealing "limited" effectiveness against the local variant of the virus.

"Far too early to reject this vaccine"?

According to the initial results of this study, this vaccine is only 22% effective against moderate forms of the South African variant.

No results are yet available on its effectiveness against severe forms.

It is "much too early to reject this vaccine", which is "an important part of the global response to the current pandemic", however assured Richard Hatchett, who heads the CEPI, the research arm of the Covax mechanism, set up by WHO to try to guarantee an equitable distribution of the means to fight against Covid-19.

"We believe that our vaccine will still protect against severe forms of the disease," said a spokesperson for AstraZeneca.

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