More details on @WHO visit to China re. COVID origins. No WIV visit planned. I guess @WHO scientists looked at all published data & concluded, like almost all other virologists, that there's no evidence for it coming out of lab & lots for a natural origin. independent.co.uk/news/world/asi…
For those who believe lab leak, or bioengineered theory, or want to 'investigate' that, I believe ultimately they will be disappointed. Finding origins of SARS-CoV-2 will likely involve detailed, lengthy fieldwork, behavioral risk analysis, mapping of wildlife farms & trade..
We've done a lot already (see paper below, now accepted by @NatureComms), & we would be able to do much more to identify origins of COVID & risk of next one, but unfortunately same conspiracies led to our @NIH funding being frozen/terminated!! biorxiv.org/content/10.110… 
I predict there'll be dozens of novel bat-CoVs much closer to SARS2 discovered in next few yrs in SE Asia & substantial evidence of how it emerged. Not from a mine where diff. CoV sequence found, not from lab, but like all prior pandemics, from wildlife due to human envtl change.
By the way - noticed that this Express article names Prof. Zhengli "Ms Zhengli". Just a bit of nasty sexism & disrespect I guess?
Here's the offending article: "... who has worked for 15 years in a team headed by Ms Zhengli, seemingly confirmed the same virus was found in the mines..." Hate to share such guff, but didn't want people to think it was the independent piece. express.co.uk/news/world/130…
UPDATE from @WHO briefing today Jul 13th. This is a preliminary visit to understand work that's been done/data collected already. Larger visit collab. w/ Chinese colleagues over wks mnths ahead. Laying out plans on this trip, no field investigations..... who.int/emergencies/di…
2 leading @WHO scientists will join team already on ground, currently in standard quarantine,so remotely for now. Team will be mtg w/ ministries, scientists in China to ID what has been done & what needs to happen. @sneweyy @DrMikeRyan @mvankerkhove 10:20mins into webcast.
.@WHO "generally does not announce names of staff who go on mission in the field", BUT, one is a leading expert on animal-human interface, other is UK academic epidemiologist who led analytics effort on Ebola N. Kivu DRC.
"We assume primary host [of SARS-CoV-2] is a bat".. but what & where was wildlife-human chain? "It could have been in area where 1st human cases are noticed or can occur far away from there. We certainly saw that with Ebola..that 1st human cases can be unnoticed". @DrMikeRyan
All this in response to q. on report of CoV in Spain March 2019 (35:15mins on) . Need to follow science & data, not be taken down 'alleyways'. Need to look at 1st cluster of cases in Wuhan & move back to where/when spillover occurred...
From @mvankerkhove: Large network of scientists wrking on COVID origins in China & intl. @WHO will follow science. Also critical to find intermediate host, rule out continued risk. My conclusion: @WHO investigation is more thoughtful and deeper than media suggested yesterday!
