In a one-sentence announcement from the Nationwide Well being Fee, it wrote that the specialists would arrive this week and meet with Chinese language counterparts, but it surely gave no different particulars.
It is usually not clear if specialists shall be travelling to the central Chinese language metropolis of Wuhan, the place the virus was first detected in late 2019 or to different elements of the nation.
Negotiations over the go to have been ongoing. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had beforehand expressed disappointment over the delays and the way lengthy it had taken for an investigation to start.
China’s authorities has strictly managed all analysis into the origins of the virus, an Related Press investigation discovered. State-owned media have performed up experiences that counsel the virus may have originated elsewhere.
The information of the investigation got here as China recorded 87,536 complete circumstances of the virus, together with 4,634 deaths.
The nation’s hospitals are at the moment treating 673 individuals for Covid-19, whereas 506 others are in isolation and below remark after testing constructive with out displaying signs, officers mentioned.
Individuals are pictured on the entrance to the Purple Cross hospital in Wuhan on January 11, 2021.
/ AFP through Getty Photographs )Australia and different international locations have additionally referred to as for an investigation into the origins of the virus.
After Mr Tedros’s earlier assertion, China’s Overseas Ministry had mentioned the nation was open to a go to however that it was nonetheless engaged on “needed procedures and related concrete plans”.
China’s illness specialists are at the moment busy, with a number of small-scale clusters and outbreaks reported up to now couple of weeks, ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying mentioned.
“Our specialists are wholeheartedly within the annoying battle to manage the epidemic,” Ms Hua mentioned.
Including to the sense of urgency, UN spokeswoman Stephane Dujarric advised reporters at UN headquarters in New York that secretary-general Antonio Guterres “is totally supportive of Dr Tedros’s and WHO’s efforts to get a group in there”.
“It’s essential that because the WHO is within the lead in combating the pandemic, that it additionally has a number one position in making an attempt to look again on the roots of this pandemic so we will be higher ready for the following one,” Ms Dujarric mentioned.
