ABOVE: Wuhan, China
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Investigators from the World Health Organization on a mission in China to track down the roots of the COVID-19 pandemic report that the prevailing hypothesis—that SARS-CoV-2 originated in an animal host and worked its way, possibly through intermediate hosts, to humans—is supported by their evidence.
An alternative proposal that the virus came from a lab is “extremely unlikely,” Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO’s food safety and animal disease specialist and chair of the investigative team, tells The Guardian. It “isn’t a hypothesis we suggest implies further study. . . . There had been no publication or research of this virus or one close to this virus, anywhere in the world.”
For nearly a month, Embarek’s team has been in Wuhan, China, where COVID-19 was first noticed in late 2019. The Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan had been identified as a common factor in the early ...
