WHO team lands in Wuhan to probe COVID-19 origin after China reports a death in 8 months

A team of World Health Organization (WHO) consisting of 10-members arrived in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the Coronavirus virus first emerged in December 2019, on Thursday. This team from Singapore is assigned to probe the origins of Coronavirus. The probe came in after China reported its first death from the killer virus in eight months amid a resurgence in COVID-19 cases.

The WHO team will receive both throat swabs and antibody tests at the Wuhan airport, and will be quarantined for 14 days as per the regulations, reports China’s state-affiliated media Global Times.

“Current plan is that they will fly from Singapore to Wuhan on January 14. It is expected that they will have to complete two weeks of quarantine due to China’s strict border restrictions,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a media briefing earlier.

Peter Ben Embarek, team leader for WHO’s mission said,” It could be a very long journey before we get a full understanding of what happened.”

As per experts, solving the mystery of how COVID-19 first jumped from animals to humans is crucial to preventing another pandemic.

COVID-19 has killed around two million people worldwide since the outbreak first emerged in China’s Wuhan. Thousands of mutations in the deadly virus have taken place as it has passed from person to person across the world, but new variants recently detected in the United Kingdom and South Africa are seemingly more contagious.