No indication of COVID-19 virus in Wuhan before December 2019: WHO mission

A WHO-China Joint Study Press Conference is held at the end of a WHO mission to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province on Feb. 9, 2021. (AP)

• Mission had not found the animal host responsible for transferring the virus to humans
• ‘The laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus into the human population’

WUHAN, China: There is insufficient evidence to determine that COVID-19 was being spread in China’s central Wuhan before December 2019, a joint WHO and Chinese expert mission into the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan said Tuesday.

“There is no indication of the transmission of the SARS-COV-2 in the population of the period before Dec 2019,” said Liang Wannian, head of the China team, at a press conference, adding that there was “not enough evidence” to determine if the virus had spread in the city prior to that.

The mission also said it had not found the animal host responsible for transferring the virus to humans.

Transmission from animals was likely but so far “the reservoir hosts remain to be identified,” Wannian said.

“The laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus into the human population,” said Peter Ben Embarek, the head of the WHO mission. “Therefore is not in the hypotheses that we will suggest for future studies.”