By Robert Preidt and Robin Foster
HealthDay reporter
THURSDAY, Aug 26, 2021 (HealthDay News) – The search for the source of the new coronavirus is at an impasse and the window of opportunity to identify the origins of the virus is closing “quickly,” a team appointed by the World Health Organization Experts said Wednesday.
The investigation is at a “critical point” that requires urgent collaboration, but Chinese officials are reluctant to share some raw data as they have concerns about patient confidentiality, the team wrote in a comment published Wednesday in Nature has been published.
“The window of opportunity to conduct this important study is rapidly closing: any delay will make some of the studies biologically impossible,” wrote the group of international scientists.
“Antibodies are dwindling, so collecting more samples and testing people who may have been exposed before December 2019 will result in diminishing returns,” they noted.
China said Wednesday that officials “should focus on other possible avenues that could help trace the origin of COVID-19,” and suggested investigating other countries as well, the Associated Press reported. In December 2019, the first human cases of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan, China.
Tracking down the origin of the coronavirus has become a sticking point between the US and China as more American experts call for investigations from the two Wuhan laboratories near the seafood market where the first cases were reported, the AP said. China has since rejected this idea and branded it a “scapegoat”.
The WHO team traveled to Wuhan earlier this year and published an analysis in March that concluded the virus likely passed from humans to animals and said the likelihood that the virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory, was “extremely unlikely,” reported the AP.
In related news, a U.S. intelligence review commissioned by President Joe Biden failed to produce firm conclusions about the source of the virus, according to the Washington Post.
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SOURCE: Associated Press
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