Nothing to See Here: W.H.O. Stands with Beijing, Absolves Wuhan Lab of Coronavirus Leak
SIMON KENT
9 Feb 2021

It is “extremely unlikely” the coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, and is more likely to have jumped to humans from an animal, World Health Organization (W.H.O.) investigators said Tuesday as they wrapped up their visit to the country’s central Hubei province.

Peter Embarek, leader of the W.H.O. team, told a media conference instead of investigating laboratories in the country, frozen meats sold at the wet market in Wuhan where the first cluster of cases was detected should instead be pursued as a line of inquiry.

“Our initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway and one that will require more studies and more specific, targeted research,” Embarek said, as reported by AP.

“However, the findings suggest that the laboratory incidents hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus to the human population,” Embarek said.

He backed Beijing and dismissed claims of transmission “in Wuhan or elsewhere” in China before December 2019 – despite allegations the virus was circulating globally months earlier than that, as Breitbart News reported.

Professor Liang Wannian, an expert with China’s Health Commission, told the same press briefing he agreed there had been no substantial spread of the virus in the city of 11 million before the late 2019 outbreak, Reuters reports.

Winnian said while transmissions from animals to humans via bats remains the likeliest origin of coronavirus, the original host “has not been identified.”

Bats and pangolins are potential animal sources of the virus, the professor said, but the coronavirus samples found in them were similar, but not identical to the virus found in humans.

Link Twitter Breitbart London

He claimed studies showed the coronavirus “can be carried long-distance on cold chain products,” a nod towards the theory of possible importation of the virus – a point that has gained strength in China in recent months.

Chinese authorities have kept a tight hold on information about the possible causes of the pandemic that has now sickened more than 105 million people and killed more than 2.2 million worldwide.

The Associated Press contributed to this story

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https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2021/02/0...ronavirus-leak/

WHO researchers in China conclude COVID unlikely leaked from Wuhan Institute of Virology
Research team says the virus more likely jumped from an animal to humans.
By Joseph Weber
Updated: February 9, 2021 - 10:45am

The team of World Health Organization researchers that has been in China over the past few weeks trying to determine how the novel coronavirus started in that country says the disease is unlikely to have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and more likely jumped from an animal to a human.

The conclusion was announced Tuesday as the team concluded its investigation.

The Chinese government said when first reporting the virus outbreak in late-2019 that it started when a woman bought and ate a bat at an exotic, outdoor food market in the city of Wuhan. However, U.S. lawmakers and others have since raised concerns about whether it was leaked from the lab.

In addition, world leaders have raised concerns about the Chinese Communist Party's transparency about the start of virus and its early response. And they have raised similar concerns about the WHO.

One of the WHO researchers was British zoologist Peter Daszak, who helped channel federal funding grants in 2019 to the Wuhan lab.

He also is the president of New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, an organization that bills itself as "a global environmental health nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting wildlife and public health from the emergence of disease," as reported by Just the News.

The central China lab having collected extensive virus samples led to the allegations that it may have caused the original outbreak by leaking the virus into the surrounding community.

The WHO team is considering several theories for how the disease first ended up in humans, leading to a pandemic that has now killed more than 2.3 million people worldwide, according to the Associated Press.

"Our initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway and one that will require more studies and more specific targeted research," WHO food safety and animal diseases expert Peter Ben Embarek said at a news conference Tuesday.

"However, the findings suggest that the laboratory incidents hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus to the human population" and will not be suggested as an avenue of future study, Embarek also said, according to the wire service.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/...wuhan-institute

WHO says COVID-19 unlikely to have leaked from China lab
By Jackie Salo
February 9, 2021 | 8:15am | Updated

A World Health Organization-led team investigating the origins of COVID-19 determined Tuesday that it’s “extremely unlikely” the virus leaked from a Chinese lab.

The team that visited the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the outbreak first emerged at a seafood market in late 2019, said more work is needed to identify the source of the novel virus that has killed 2.3 million people worldwide.

“Our initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway and one that will require more studies and more specific targeted research,” WHO food safety and animal diseases expert Peter Ben Embarek said.

“However, the findings suggest that the laboratory incidents hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus to the human population,” he added.

Embarek said that the possibility that the virus was manufactured in a lab, such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology, would not be encouraged as an avenue for further study.

Bats were a probable source of transmission, but it’s unlikely they were in Wuhan, Embarek said.

He said investigators are also looking at the possibility that the virus was transmitted through the sale of frozen animal products.

“So there is the potential to continue to follow this lead and further look at the supply chain and animals that were supplied to the market,” he said.

“We know the virus can survive in conditions that are found in these cold, frozen environments, but we don’t really understand if the virus can transmit to humans,” he added.

China has promoted the idea that the virus can be found on frozen food and repeatedly announced finding traces of the virus on imported packaging.

The Communist government has also vehemently denied the possibility that the pandemic was caused by a lab accident.

Liang Wannian, head of China’s expert panel on the outbreak, doubled down on these claims Tuesday — noting that there was evidence of coronavirus infections “several weeks” before the first detected case.

“This suggests that we cannot rule out that it was circulating in other regions and the circulation was unreported,” he told the briefing.

The WHO mission was initially resisted by China and took months to negotiate following pressure at the World Health Assembly meeting last May — and Beijing has still refused to allow an independent investigation.

The team arrived in Wuhan on Jan. 14 and following two weeks of quarantine, they visited key sites such as hospitals, seafood markets and research facilities.

However, the investigators only went on visits organized by their Chinese hosts and weren’t allowed to have contact with members of the community, due to health concerns.

“It is of course impossible to know what you are not being told, but what I am seeing in China, and what this group is seeing in China, is that what we asked for, we are being allowed to do,” Peter Daszak, a zoologist and animal disease expert, previously said.

The US has criticized China for not being more transparent about the outbreak as well as not permitting access to patients, medical staff and lab workers.

Beijing has in turn accused the US of trying to politicize a scientific mission.

https://nypost.com/2021/02/09/who-team-c...from-china-lab/

FYI WHO also has a bridge for sale