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Covid-19 patient: when and where did the coronavirus spread to people?
Photo: Jens Büttner / dpa
Where does the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus come from?
The World Health Organization (WHO) would like to clarify this question with the help of a group of experts who are to travel to China.
The members were announced on Monday.
Germany is represented by an employee of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
Fabian Leendertz is an expert on zoonoses, i.e. pathogens that spread from animals to humans, as well as the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus.
Christian Drosten, one of the researchers with the greatest coronavirus expertise worldwide, is missing from the group.
Missed call
"Many scientists would have liked to contribute to this mission," wrote Drosten on Twitter.
"I wonder how those on the list were selected." Drosten has spent his entire research life studying coronaviruses and has also examined the animal origin of the pandemic coronaviruses Sars and Mers.
The Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans, who is part of the expert group, said there had been a call on the WHO Global Outbreak Alert and Response Networks (GOARN).
Drosten apparently didn't know anything about it and regretted that he missed the hint.
At the request of SPIEGEL, the WHO stated that it had sent a request to GOARN members on August 28.
A total of 38 experts have expressed their interest in becoming part of the group.
The WHO supplemented this list with further experts in order to cover as many regions and specialist areas as possible.
To this end, she contacted scientists through her expert networks and received suggestions from member states.
In the end, 42 expert profiles were examined more closely and ten experts selected, two women and eight men.
According to the selection process, there are many experts who have already advised the WHO beforehand.
China's leadership was allowed to approve the selection
The list was presented to contacts in China for information, writes the WHO.
There were no objections.
According to a report by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, Emergency Relief Director Michael Ryan said in October that the WHO would coordinate the selection with the Chinese leadership in Beijing.
On October 30th, the newly deployed team held a virtual conference with colleagues from China for the first time.
It is still unclear when the researchers will be allowed to participate in studies in China.
Ryan said Monday that the WHO expected the expert group to act on the ground as soon as possible.
"We have received an assurance from our Chinese government colleagues that part of the mission on site will be facilitated as quickly as possible so that the international community can be sure of the quality of the work."
Politically explosive topic
The WHO announced in July that it would send a group of experts to China.
The team would arrive "in a few weeks," it said at the time.
But apparently those responsible in China have so far denied entry.
Critical voices fear that China will not allow independent experts into the country.
The origin of the virus is a political issue because it also involves the question of who is to blame for the global spread of the virus.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused China of being responsible for the pandemic.
Beijing, on the other hand, claims that just because the virus was first identified in China does not necessarily mean that it originated there.
Both the United States and the European Union (EU) have recently called for more transparency with regard to the work of the WHO group in China.
So far, 1.4 million people worldwide have died from and with the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus.
Interdisciplinary team
The experts selected by the WHO come from Germany and the Netherlands, Japan, Qatar, Vietnam, Russia, Australia, Denmark, Great Britain and the USA and represent different disciplines.
Virologists are represented, along with animal and public health professionals.
In addition to the zoonoses experts Leendertz and Koopmans, who as Director of the Department of Viroscience at the Erasmus Medical Center at the University of Rotterdam deals with emerging viral diseases and heads a WHO collaborating center, the British American zoologist Peter Daszak is also there.
He is President of the non-governmental organization EcoHealth Alliance, which works to protect people, animals and the environment from emerging infectious diseases.
Daszak specializes in identifying potentially dangerous pathogens and was also involved in identifying the origin of the Sars virus, which was rampant in 2002/2003.
Like Drosten, Daszak is one of the most cited experts in his field.
On Twitter, however, some criticize the selection, as Daszak is investigating in the laboratory which Sars-CoV viruses from bats can bind to human cells.
He is biased to assess whether the new Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus comes from a laboratory in China.
So far there is no evidence or evidence for this thesis.
Others see Daszak's experience with coronaviruses as evidence that he has the necessary expertise for the WHO mission.
Prevent retransmission
The Coronavirus-Sars-CoV-2 has its origin with a high probability in horseshoe bat bats.
They are known to carry large numbers of coronaviruses, but not to get sick from them.
The virus could have passed from there to humans via an intermediate host.
The WHO group wants to clarify whether this has happened for the first time in a market in the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan.
The first Covid 19 cases that became known at the end of 2019 had a connection to the trading center, but early infections were also known independently of this.
The results of the WHO study are intended to help prevent re-transmission of the pathogen to humans.
Other members of the team are the epidemiologist John Watson, Deputy Medical Director of the UK Ministry of Health until 2017 and former member of a WHO advisory group, Farag El Moubasher from the Ministry of Health in Qatars, the virologist and public health specialist Thea Fischer from Nordsjællands Hospital at the University of Copenhagen and the microbiologist Dominic Dwyer of Westmead Hospital in Sydney.
In addition, the WHO has chosen the epidemiologist Vladimir Dedkov from the Russian Pasteur Institute in Saint Petersburg, the Japanese researcher Ken Maeda from the National Institute of Infectious Diseases there and the Vietnamese researcher Hung Nguyen from the International Livestock Research Institute.
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