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A team of international scientists assembled by the World Health Organization to look into the origins of the pandemic said that bats likely carried an ancestor of the coronavirus that may have then spilled over into a mammal sold at a wildlife market.
But the experts said that more Chinese data was needed to study how the virus spread to people — including the possibility that a lab leak played a role.
The team, which was appointed by the W.H.O. in October as it tried to reset its approach to studying the pandemic’s origins, said that Chinese scientists had shared information with them, but gaps in Chinese reports made it difficult to determine when and where the outbreak emerged. No new data pointed to a lab leak, the new report said, but the group said that they wanted to evaluate any evidence that emerges in the future.
Looking ahead. Independent experts said it was unclear how the team, which follows a previous group of scientists that the W.H.O. sent to China in early 2021, could help the organization break through the political barriers in China that have stalled the publication of most information about the virus’s origins.
-The New York Times