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FURY is growing as the World Health Organisation was accused of a whitewash as it found Covid likely didn t originate at the Wuhan wet market or come from a lab leak.
Both suggestions that the virus could have originally crossed to humans at the Huanan Seafood Market, or escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) were thrown out in a lengthy joint press conference.
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It was originally claimed the virus jumped to humans at the Huanan Seafood MarketCredit: AP:Associated Press
WHO s findings appeared to largely back Communist Party protestations that the virus may have originated from outside of its borders and its repeated denials of a lab accident.
New York Times: W.H.O. experts investigating the origin of the virus visit a lab in Wuhan
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A team of experts from the World Health Organization investigating the origins of the pandemic visited a research center in Wuhan, China, on Wednesday that has been a focus of several unfounded theories about the coronavirus.
The W.H.O. scientists met with staff members at the center, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which houses a state-of-the-art laboratory known for its research on coronaviruses.
The institute came under scrutiny last year as the Trump administration promoted the unsubstantiated theory that the virus might have leaked from a government-run laboratory in China. But many senior American officials have said in private that evidence pointing to a lab accident is mainly circumstantial.
The coronavirus pandemic definitely started in China, according to a scientific study that has traced the mother of all Covid-19 infections and its initial descendants to the country.
The groundbreaking research by US experts, which analysed samples from thousands of coronavirus patients, also established that the outbreak almost certainly began in October 2019.
Their findings challenge Beijing s attempts to divert attention to other nations as the pandemic s birthplace, with officials arguing that the virus may have been imported into Wuhan, in China s Hubei province.
The study s suggested date of first infections fits with claims from the US State Department that several researchers at the top-security Wuhan Institute of Virology fell sick in the autumn of 2019.