Go back to the origin of the coronavirus, mission impossible for WHO experts?

Two experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) arrived in Beijing on Saturday to lay the groundwork for the upcoming investigation into the emergence of the new coronavirus. From this exploratory mission to the announcement of the results, this work of the United Nations promises to be long. It is difficult to say today whether it will allow lessons to be learned for the future, before a future pandemic. As for China's full cooperation, it is far from certain.

For now, the work of the two experts who set foot in Beijing comes down to interviews with Chinese officials. Together, they must determine the places that the future fact-finding mission will have to visit. The presence of an animal health specialist, alongside an epidemiologist, is a "good sign", according to biologist Serge Morand: "Animal health experts have an extensive culture. "

In theory, this broad vision of the WHO envoy, his knowledge of zoonoses (diseases transmissible between animals and humans), chains of transmission between wildlife, domestic animals and humans, should allow " list the important questions ”.

Find places, events and protagonists

The questions that remain to be solved are not lacking, according to this CNRS researcher. “When we look at the first cases of infection, we see that most of these people had not gone to Wuhan. What is the origin of these first cases? Where are the samples that go back to the source? WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris only touched on the organization's expectations last Friday: "We know that the coronavirus is very similar to a virus found in bats, but is it passed by an intermediate animal? This is a question that we must see resolved. "

Once deployed, WHO experts will carry out a sort of “police investigation”, as explained by doctor and researcher Anne Sénéquier, co-director of the World Health Observatory of the Institute of Relations international and strategic (Iris). “It will be a question of finding the places, the events and the protagonists. Was the virus transmitted by the animal itself or its secretions? These elements can change the way we manage future epidemics. Because among the root causes, several hypotheses compete: trafficking in wild animals, too close proximity between reservoir species and farms ...

The passage of the Nipah virus to humans in 1998 was the result of an encounter between bats fleeing deforestation in Borneo and pig farms in Singapore and Malaysia, which suffered from their excrement. Similarly, the Covid-19 could find its origin outside of China. "To clear customs and put an end to this idea of the Chinese virus , Beijing has every interest in cooperating with the WHO," insists Anne Sénéquier.

Limited powers

However, in the weeks following the first infections, China was in no hurry to collaborate with the United Nations. As the Associated Press revealed in early June, the country released the genome of the new coronavirus more than a week after decoding it. Even as the WHO officially praised Beijing's rapid reaction, executives of the agency complained in private in early January about its lack of transparency and the lack of shared data.

The positive discourse towards Beijing, reiterated after returning from a mission in February, seems to have clearly influenced the American decision to suspend funding to WHO, which has serious consequences for the organization.

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The WHO has no real means of imposing a transparent investigation on China, as the United States called for it last Friday. Certainly, international law requires countries to report to WHO information that could have an impact on public health. But the UN agency must rely on the cooperation of member states to investigate their territories. "In the constitution of the WHO, if there is no binding measure, emphasizes Anne Sénéquier, it is because the States have decided! "

In mid-May, Chinese leader Xi Jinping still advocated waiting for the epidemic to be "stopped", a horizon still difficult to distinguish, before WHO starts the field investigation. We can guess that time will not play in favor of investigations ... For the answers, we will have to wait a long time. As Serge Morand recalls, “for the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, we had to wait until 2016 to locate its origin, on farms in Mexico. "