WUHAN, China (AP) – A World Health Organization team quarantined Thursday in the Chinese city of Wuhan to begin fieldwork on a research mission on the origins of the virus that caused the pandemic COVID-19.
Investigators, who had to isolate themselves 14 days after arriving in China, left the quarantine hotel with their luggage (including at least four yoga mats) in the mid-afternoon and headed to another hotel.
The mission has been politically charged as China tries to avoid blaming the alleged missteps in its first response to the outbreak. One of the main issues is where the Chinese will allow the researchers to go and with whom they will be able to talk.
Yellow barriers blocked the hotel entrance and kept the media at bay. Before investigators boarded the bus, workers wearing protective suits and face shields could be seen carrying luggage, including two musical instruments and a dumbbell.
Hotel staff said goodbye to investigators wearing masks. The bus driver was wearing a full-length white protective suit. They drove about 30 minutes to a lakeside Hilton hotel.
Former WHO official Keiji Fukuda, who is not part of the Wuhan team, has warned that no progress is expected, saying it could be years before firm conclusions could be reached about the origin of the virus.
“It’s been over a year now since it all started,” he said earlier this month. “A lot of the physical evidence will go away. People’s memories are inaccurate and the physical design of many places will probably be different than they were.”
Among the places they could visit is the Huanan Seafood Market, which was linked to many of the early cases, as well as research institutes and hospitals that cared for patients at the height of the outbreak.
It has not been revealed whether they will leave Wuhan. A possible source of the virus is bats in caves in rural Yunnan Province, about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) southwest of Wuhan.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the experts would hold talks, visits and inspections in China to conduct exchanges and cooperation on virus scanning. He did not provide any details.
The mission only came after a considerable dispute between the two sides that sparked a rare WHO complaint that China was taking too long to make final arrangements.
China, which has strongly opposed an independent investigation it could not fully control, said the matter was complicated and that Chinese medical staff were concerned about new virus clusters in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities.
Although the WHO was criticized at first, especially by the United States, for not being critical enough of the Chinese response, it recently accused China and other countries of moving too slowly at the start of the outbreak, gaining a rare admission from the side. Chinese that could have been better.
Overall, however, China has strongly defended its response, possibly out of concern for reputational or even financial costs if it is found to be missing.
Chinese officials and state media have also tried to question whether the virus even started in China. Most experts believe it came from bats, possibly in southwest China or neighboring areas of Southeast Asia, before moving on to another animal and then humans.
The source search will try to determine exactly where and how this happened.
White House Press Secretary Zen Psaki on Wednesday expressed concern over what she called “misinformation” coming out of China, adding that the U.S. supports strong international research.
“It is imperative that we get to the bottom of the early days of the pandemic in China,” he said.
Zhao responded that any negative speculation and politicized interpretation of the mission is inappropriate.
“We hope the United States can work with the Chinese side responsibly, respect facts and science, and respect the hard work of the international expert team to track the origin of the virus,” he said, “so that they can lead to term scientific research research on virus monitoring without any political interference ”.
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Associated Press photographer Ng Han Guan contributed to this report.