9 Feb 2021
The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) announced on Tuesday that its investigation into the origin of the Chinese coronavirus in its home city, the central metropolis of Wuhan, yielded no significant evidence – an unsurprising conclusion given that Chinese officials admitted to destroying early virus samples and other critical evidence last year.
The W.H.O. team, working in conjunction with Communist Party experts, spent much of last week visiting sites of interest in Wuhan, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) – the source of much speculation of a potential pathogen leak – and the Huanan seafood market, where Communist Party officials initially claimed the virus had originated. The results of the team’s investigation, as revealed on Tuesday, echoed Chinese government claims that the virus may have originated in a different country and entered China on frozen food products, a theory that most international scientists consider highly unlikely.