Scientists probing the origins of the coronavirus are wrapping up a lengthy investigation in China and have found “important clues” about a Wuhan seafood market’s role in the outbreak.
Peter Daszak, a New York-based zoologist assisting the World Health Organization-sponsored mission, said he anticipates the main findings will be released before his planned Feb. 10 departure. Speaking from the central city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 mushroomed in December 2019, Daszak said the 14-member group worked with experts in China and visited key hot spots and research centers to uncover “some real clues about what happened.”
Investigators want to know how the SARS-CoV-2 virus — whose closest known relative came from bats 1,000 miles away — spread explosively in Wuhan before causing the worst contagion in more than a century. Daszak said the investigation heralds a turning point in pandemic mitigation.
“It’s the beginning of hopefully a really deep understanding of what happened so we can stop the next one,” he said over Zoom late Friday. “That’s what this is all about — trying to understand why these things emerge so we don’t continually have global economic crashes and horrific mortality while we wait for vaccines. It’s just not a tenable future.”
Worldwide, Covid-19 has caused more than 105.7 million infections and 2.3 million deaths
The WHO was asked in May to help “identify the zoonotic source of the virus and the route of introduction to the human population, including the possible role of intermediate hosts.”