Beijing, China:
World Health Organization inspectors had “very frank” discussions with Chinese scientists about the supply of the pandemic, which includes theories it leaked from a laboratory, the head of the probe in Wuhan told AFP Thursday.
The talks covered popular claims broadly reported in worldwide media, Peter Ben Embarek stated in an interview a day soon after he and his WHO group visited the lab.
While he did not determine precise theories, Ben Embarek described some of them as irrational and insisted the investigators would not waste time chasing the wildest claims.
“The discussions were very frank,” the meals security scientist with the UN wellness agency stated by phone from Wuhan, the central Chinese city exactly where the coronavirus was 1st detected in December 2019.
“We discussed… a lot of the famous theories and so on, and what has been done to explain them,” added Ben Embarak, who was based in the WHO’s Beijing workplace for two years from 2009.
Since emerging from a 14-day hotel quarantine final week, the WHO professionals have visited a quantity of higher-profile internet sites linked to the pandemic origins, which includes a seafood industry exactly where persons had been 1st discovered falling ill.
The trip on Wednesday to the Wuhan Institute of Virology was one of the highest-profile events on the agenda simply because of the controversial theory it was the supply of the pandemic.
Scientists at the laboratory conduct study on some of the world’s most hazardous ailments, which includes strains of bat coronaviruses comparable to Covid-19.
Speculation emerged early in the pandemic that the virus could have accidentally leaked from the lab in Wuhan, though there was no proof to back up that theory.
Then-US president Donald Trump and his supporters seized on these rumours and amplified them with conspiracy theories that China deliberately leaked the virus.
No “chasing ghosts”
Ben Embarek stated discussions at the lab had been helpful to realize the staff’s position “in regards to many of these statements and claims that everyone has seen and read about in the news”.
He appeared to dismiss some of the theories, calling considerably of the speculation “excellent scenarios for good movies and series for the years to come”.
He also emphasised the WHO investigators would “follow science and we follow facts” in reaching their conclusions.
“If we start following and chasing ghosts here and there, we’ll never move anywhere,” he told AFP.
“So that’s also an important step that we were also able to understand where these stories are coming from.
“And we are in a position to, in a rational way… clarify why some of them are entirely irrational, why some of them could make sense, and why some of them can be explained or not explained,” he said.
The team visited the institute’s P4 lab — Asia’s first maximum-security lab equipped to handle Class 4 pathogens such as Ebola.
Ben Embarek said the trip to Wuhan, which is due to conclude within the next week, would not lead to a final conclusion on how the virus jumped from animals to humans.
“We’re not going to come up with the ultimate complete understanding of the origins of this virus, but it will be a excellent 1st step,” he said.
“It will be a really robust and clear ideal way we will lay for how to move forward.”
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