World Health Organization's experts will pay a third visit to China to continue to trace the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and its resulting Covid-19 pneumonia, the Chinese government confirmed today.
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Hua Chunying, the Foreign Ministry's spokesperson, indicated that Beijing took the initiative of inviting the international organization's experts to work together with local scientists on the investigation and manage to clarify how animals can host the pathogen and transmit it to humans.
The Ministry's spokesperson also commented on the close communication between the parties through videoconferences and the consensus achieved to expand cooperation, prevent health crises in the future, and protect health across the world.
The fundamental consensus between China and the WHO is that origin-tracing of the virus that affects humankind is a scientific endeavor that should be tackled by scientists across the globe through international research and cooperation, the spokesperson stressed.
It is also the view of the WHO that origin-tracing is an ongoing process probably concerning many countries and localities, and that the organization will conduct similar trips to other countries and regions in light of the actual need, she said.
In February and July 2020, WHO experts paid the first and second visit to the Asian nation and visited health centers in Beijing, Guangdong, Sichuan, and Wuhan to supervise actions to tackle this disease. According to reports, the visits' goal was to offer suggestions for new stages in preventing and controlling outbreaks both in China and other nations in the world.
It also focused on identifying the exact animal that developed the virus. They consider that this information would help avoid more pandemics like the current one in the future and to understand its massive spread in Wuhan, where the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was first reported in late 2019.