The assignment this time is broader than last time. “We are not just going to focus on the coronavirus,” Koopmans told RTL Nieuws. “We are forming an advisory group to advise the WHO on what will happen if there is a new outbreak of an infectious disease.”
Normally, such examinations are carried out on a disease-by-disease basis. ”But we want to look at standard questions that apply to every infectious disease. Such as: can we ensure that there are clear instructions that can be applied to all outbreaks? You could then also use those instructions during an outbreak of the Ebola virus,” says Koopmans.
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At the beginning of this year, Koopmans was part of another WHO team that investigated the origin of the corona virus. Before that, they went to the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first major outbreak was.
Four possibilities
After that research, many questions remained, for example about whether the researchers could work freely. In the end, no firm conclusion was drawn about the origin of the coronavirus, but four possible hypotheses emerged.
“The most likely scenario is that the coronavirus passed from a bat to another animal, and then spread to humans. That the virus originated in a laboratory is the least plausible scenario,” says Koopmans.
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Together with her new colleagues, she is going to look again at questions that remained after the previous research. “More studies have been added since then. We will see if we can gain new insights as a result.”
The team expects to begin the investigation in about a month. It is not yet known whether they will travel to China again.
More and more virus outbreaks
According to the virologist, it is very important to know where a virus originates. “Because we can learn a lot from that, about how these types of outbreaks arise. We can do a lot with that in the future.”
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