WHO team visits China's Wuhan provincial CDC, avoids speaking to journalists

A World Health Organization-led team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic on Monday (February 1) visited the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), after earlier in the day visiting the Hubei provincial CDC.

The group of independent experts spent about four-and-a-half hours at the provincial CDC, its longest site visit since finishing two weeks of quarantine on Thursday, and did not speak to waiting journalists.

The WHO, which has sought to manage expectations for the mission, has said that team members would be limited to visits organised by their Chinese hosts and would not have any contact with community members, because of health restrictions.

Thus far, the group has also visited hospitals where early cases were detected, markets, and an exhibition commemorating Wuhan's battle with the outbreak.

No full itinerary for the group's field work has been announced, and journalists covering the tightly controlled visit have been kept at a distance from team members.

Beijing has sought to cast doubt on the notion that the coronavirus originated in China, pointing to imported frozen food as a conduit, a hypothesis that was again raised on Sunday (January 31) in a story by the Global Times, a tabloid run by the ruling Communist Party's People's Daily.