WHO report on virus origins work of 'collaboration,' says WHO team leader

The World Health Organization (WHO) report on the joint WHO-China study of COVID-19 origins was a "consensus" effort of a "sheer size" but it was too soon to provide definitive conclusions in a work that is still in progress, a member of the WHO research team said on Tuesday.

Peter K. Ben Embarek, leader of the international team of experts to Wuhan, told a press conference that conclusions of the report were the results of a consensus between all members of the team, which included 17 foreign experts and 17 Chinese scientists.

"Of course there were discussions forth and back, like always in this type of discussion," he said, stressing that "we were able to reach a consensus on all the issues."

Commended the collaboration with Chinese experts, Ben Embarek said, "the size of the report and the amount of material, results, analysis and data in the report speaks for itself in terms of how the collaboration went."

The 120-page document, available on the WHO website, shed light on the likeliness of different pathways for the origins of COVID-19, with the hypothesis of the transmission from animal to human through an intermediary host presented as "likely to very likely."

However, even though the report brought considerable amounts of data, definitive conclusions could not be brought in the report yet.

"That was never the intention or the expectation," Ben Embarek said, "this is work in progress."

"I think there is a consensus that these new studies need to be undertaken, preferably as soon as possible," he added.

"We owe to the world to get a better understanding of the origin of this virus" that "created havoc on the planet," he said.