Rassegna Stampa

Ten researchers with expertise in virology, public health and animals will seek to answer this key question.

An epidemiologist who helped to tie the 2012 outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) to camels; a food-safety officer who studies how pathogens spread in markets; and a veterinarian who found evidence linking the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak to bats roosting in a hollow tree. These researchers are among the team that the World Health Organization (WHO) has assembled to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

The investigation aims to find out how and when SARS-CoV-2 first infected people. Strong evidence suggests that the coronavirus originated in bats, but its journey to people remains a mystery. Scientists say the team is highly qualified, but its task will be challenging.

“This is an excellent team with a lot of experience,” says Martin Beer, a virologist at the Federal Research Institute for Animal Health in Greifswald, Germany.

The group will be working with researchers in China and professionals from several other international agencies, and will start the search in Wuhan — the Chinese city where the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was first identified — and expand across China and beyond.