WUHAN, China – A global team of researchers arrived Thursday in the Chinese city where the coronavirus was first detected to conduct a politically sensitive investigation into its origins amid uncertainty as to whether Beijing could try to avoid embarrassing discoveries.
The 10-member team sent to Wuhan by the World Health Organization (WHO) was approved by President Xi Jinping’s government after months of diplomatic disputes.
Scientists suspect that the virus that has killed more than 1.9 million people since the end of 2019 has hit humans from bats or other animals, probably in southwest China. The government’s Communist Party, plagued by complaints that it allowed the disease to spread, says the virus came from abroad, possibly in imported seafood, but scientists reject that.
The team arrived at Wuhan airport shortly after 11 am and walked through an improvised transparent plastic tunnel to the airport. The researchers, who wore only face masks, were received by airport officials with full protective equipment.
Team members include viruses and other experts from the United States, Australia, Germany, Japan, Britain, Russia, the Netherlands, Qatar and Vietnam.
Part of the WHO team was on its way to China a week ago, but had to return after Beijing announced that it had not received valid visas.
This may have been a “bureaucratic mess,” but the incident “raises the question of whether Chinese officials were trying to interfere,” said Adam Kamradt-Scott, a health expert at the University of Sydney.
The WHO tweeted on Thursday that two members of its team have not yet entered China, awaiting the results of their Covid-19 tests.
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A government spokesman said this week that they would “exchange views” with Chinese scientists, but gave no indication whether they would be allowed to gather evidence.
They will undergo a two-week quarantine, as well as a throat swab test and an antibody test for Covid-19, according to CGTN, the English channel on state television station CCTV. They are expected to start working with Chinese experts via video conferencing during quarantine.
China rejected the demands of an international investigation after the Trump administration blamed Beijing for the spread of the virus, which plunged the global economy into its worst recession since the 1930s.
One possibility for the origin of the pandemic is that a wild animal hunter may have passed the virus on to traders who took it to Wuhan, one member of the WHO team, zoologist Peter Daszak of the American group EcoHealth Alliance, told the Associated Press in November.
Another possible focus for researchers is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in the city where the outbreak began. One of China’s leading virus research laboratories, he built an archive of genetic information on coronaviruses in bats after the 2003 Outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
According to WHO’s published agenda for its research of origins, there are no plans to assess whether there may have been an accidental release of the coronavirus in Wuhan’s laboratory, as some American politicians, including President Donald Trump, have claimed.
A “scientific audit” of the Institute’s records and security measures would be a “routine activity,” said Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh. He said it depends on how willing Chinese officials are to share information.
“There is a big element of trust here,” said Woolhouse.