The novel coronavirus is “extremely unlikely” to have leaked from a Chinese laboratory, Dutch Virologist, Marion Koopmans, said after a tour to the central Chinese city of Wuhan to investigate the origin of the Coronavirus (COVID-19).
At the beginning of 2021, a team of experts appointed by the WHO completed a 28-day mission to Wuhan to investigate the origins of the virus that has caused the global COVID-19 pandemic.
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The team concluded after visiting three labs in Wuhan, including the one close to the Huanan seafood market and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and discussed their research programmes.
The team, after monitoring the way the market people work and health monitoring of their staff, also concluded, that “it’s extremely unlikely that there was a lab incidence.”
The team leader, Koopmans had on Wednesday in a video dialogue published on the website of Chatham House, a London-headquartered policy institute that “We cannot work on the basis of speculation.
“We work on the basis of the observations that we have,” she said, shattering the lab-leak theory and calling for science-based approaches.
The scientist said the team does not completely rule out the possibility that the COVID-19 could be spread by packaging on frozen food.
Koopmans mentioned a former experiment in which the virus could still be cultured back after being put on a fish and stored in a fridge for three weeks. (dpa/NAN)
