WHO = World Health Organization has announced that it will send a research team to China in the first week of next month to investigate the source of the new coronavirus.
Survey in Wuhan
"We are still adjusting the departure date, but we expect the first week of January," Ryan, who oversees crisis response at WHO, said at a regular press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on the 18th. It was.
The research team will first visit Beijing and then investigate in Wuhan, Hubei Province, where the virus was first confirmed.
WHO dispatched two staff members to Beijing in July as an advance team for the investigation team, but since then the field investigation has not been realized, and there are opinions from each country that China may not be fully cooperating. Was there.
WHO expert Peter Benembarek, who will be investigating in China with the research team next month, said in an interview with NHK on the 2nd of this month that the new corona virus is very similar to the virus found in Yunnan province seven years ago. In theory, it is reasonable to think that it occurred in China, and the focus is on how far the source of the virus and the route of infection will be elucidated through on-site investigations.