A two-member advance team of World Health Organization experts has travelled China to organise an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus behind a pandemic that has killed more than 550,000 people globally.
The virus is believed to have emerged in a wholesale market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year after jumping the species barrier from the animal kingdom to infect humans.
The two WHO experts, specialists in animal health and epidemiology, will work with Chinese scientists to determine the scope and itinerary of the investigation, WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said, declining to name them. "We know it's very, very similar to the virus in the bat, but did it go through an intermediate species?