Despite the city’s eleven million inhabitants, Wuhan was a relatively unknown name to most people before it became the epicenter of the corona pandemic.
In mid-January left experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the epicenter to investigate how the corona pandemic arose.
In the aftermath of the trip, the WHO has described the trip as valuable.
– We see new information and that is good. There are very valuable things that are starting to help us look in the right direction of the virus, has one of the WHO experts who visited Wuhan, Peter Daszak, previously stated about the trip.
– New evidence
WHO team: Data «no one has seen before»
In a new interview with the American radio channel NPR WHO expert Daszak now reveals that they have found new evidence that can say something about where the virus came from.
In the interview, the WHO expert points to farms in southern China as the most likely source of the corona pandemic.
view more
–
According to Daszak, the WHO has found evidence that the mentioned farms delivered animals to several of the stalls at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, which was the place where the very first corona patients were infected.
“They take exotic animals, such as civet cats, porcupines, pangolins, raccoon dogs and bamboo rats, and breed them in captivity,” the WHO expert told NPR.
Closed
Timeline: One year with corona
The maritime market has been closed since the beginning of 2020, but WHO experts visited the market during their visit to Wuhan.
– We talked to people who collected samples from the market floor, and who later tested positive. That’s the kind of information we get from a person who really plays a role Daszak previously told Sky News.
According to the WHO expert, the mentioned farms were a project initiated by the Chinese authorities, and are said to have employed 14 million people in 2015.
– Convinced
view more
–
On February 24 last year, Chinese authorities closed the farms, according to the WHO expert.
To NPR, he sees the shutdown as a strong signal that the authorities saw breeding as the most likely source of how bat viruses could be spread to humans.
According to the radio channel, Daszak claims that the farms may have been the place where the coronavirus jumped from a bat to another animal, and then onto humans.
– Little has been done
– I am convinced that SARS-CoV-2 jumped over to people in southern China. It looks like this, he concludes.
The Chinese authorities have not yet commented on the WHO expert’s allegations.
