We are still far from having all the answers on the origin of the coronavirus, but it is a start. WHO announced on Monday that the preparatory work for this long-term epidemiological investigation had been completed.
“The WHO forward team that visited China has now completed its mission of laying the groundwork for joint efforts to identify the origins of the virus,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at an online press conference. "Epidemiological studies will begin in Wuhan to identify the potential source of infection of the first cases," he said.
Born of the bat?
On July 10, the WHO dispatched an epidemiologist and an animal health specialist to China for an exploratory mission before the start of an investigation that the UN health organization wants to conduct into the origin of the virus. , which appeared in China at the end of 2019.
The vast majority of researchers agree that the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 - the source of the pandemic - may have originated in bats, but scientists believe it went through another species before being transmitted to humans. It is this piece of the puzzle that the international scientific community and the WHO hope to discover in order to better understand what happened, to better target risky practices and avoid a new pandemic.
The pandemic has killed at least 689,758 people around the world since the end of December, according to a report established by AFP on Monday. More than 18 million cases have been officially recorded, of which at least 10.5 million have been cured.
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