WHO investigative team reaches China to probe virus' origin

Wuhan, China: A global team of researchers reached on Thursday in the Chinese city where the coronavirus pandemic was first discovered. The global team will conduct politically sensitive research into its roots amid uncertainty about whether Beijing might try to prevent disturbing discoveries.

President Xi Jinping's government approved the 10-member team sent to Wuhan by the World Health Organization after several months of diplomatic wrangling that provoked an unprecedented public criticism by the WHO's head.

Scientists are suspecting the virus that has killed 1.9 million souls since late 2019 jumped to people from bats or other animals, most likely in China's southwest. The ruling Communist Party, stung by complaints it passed the disease to spread, says the virus arrived abroad, possibly on imported seafood, but scientists are rejecting that.

CGTN, the English-language channel of state broadcaster CCTV, reported that the WHO team's arrived. The features include viruses and other experts from the United States, Australia, Germany, Japan, Britain, Russia, the Netherlands, Qatar, and Vietnam.

This week, a government spokesman said they would “exchange views” with Chinese scientists but did not indicate at all as to whether they would be allowed to gather evidence.

China rejected demands for a global investigation after the Trump administration blamed Beijing for the virus's spread, which destroyed the global economy into its deepest slump since the 1930s.

After Australia called in April for an unconventional inquiry, Beijing retaliated by putting a block on imports of Australian beef, wine, and other goods. There is a possibility that a wildlife poacher may have passed the virus to traders who took it to Wuhan, one of the WHO team members, zoologist Peter Daszak of the U.S. group EcoHealth Alliance, said in the Associated Press in November.