WHO team starts COVID-19 investigation mission in Wuhan after completing 14-day quarantine

Beijing: The team of experts dispatched by the World Health Organization to China began their mission to investigate the origins of COVID-19 on Thursday, after they were allowed to leave the hotel in which they had been quarantined for 14 days upon their arrival.

A couple of members of the WHO team, including virologist Marion Koopmans and zoologist Peter Daszak, shared pictures of themselves completing the 14-day quarantine requirement from the Chinese authorities on their Twitter accounts.

The WHO team arrived in Wuhan on January 14 on a mission to investigate the origins of COVID-19, as the Chinese city was the world's first epicenter when a cluster of new cases emerged in December 2019. However, they had to go through a 14-day quarantine in designated hotels after arriving in Wuhan, as all overseas travellers arriving in China were required to comply with such COVID-19 containment measures.

The WHO team boarded a bus after leaving the quarantine hotel on Thursday. They are expected to visit a local market that was associated with the first cluster of patients and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which studies coronaviruses that are similar to the one that caused COVID-19. (UNI)