Expert says origins of pandemic could be known in few years

LONDON (AP) — The global community will find out “fairly soon, within the next few years” what started the coronavirus pandemic, a key member of a World Health Organization-led investigation into the pandemic's origins said on Wednesday.

In a press briefing organized by the think tank Chatham House in London, Peter Daszak estimated that collective scientific research might be able to pin down how animals carrying COVID-19 infected the first people in Wuhan identified last December.

“There was a conduit from Wuhan to the provinces in South China, where the closest relative viruses to (the coronavirus) are found in bats,” said Daszak, the president of the New York based group, EcoHealth Alliance. He said the wildlife trade was the most likely explanation of how COVID-19 arrived in Wuhan, where the first human cases were detected.

That hypothesis, Daszak said, is “the one that’s most strongly supported both on the WHO (and) the China side.” Daszak and his co-authors are set to release a report as early as next week, on the initial conclusions of their recent mission to Wuhan.

“I am convinced we’re going to find out fairly soon within the next few years," Daszak said regarding the outbreak's origins. "We can have real significant data on where this came from and how it emerged.”

It typically takes many years to pinpoint the animal reservoir of outbreaks. Although Ebola first sickened people in 1976 and the disease is thought to originate in bats, the live virus has never been identified in them.

Marion Koopmans, who was also on the WHO-led team, said they considered numerous hypotheses for how the pandemic might have started, including the possibility of a laboratory accident.

Koopmans said the team visited the three laboratories closest to the...