scientists from the world health
organization have arrived in the chinese
city of wuhan to investigate the origins
of the coronavirus pandemic
now the international team of experts
will first spend 14 days in quarantine
before researching how the virus may
have moved from animals to humans
early on it was traced to this wet
market now
shuttered up where wildlife was sold as
food
it suggested that it was here that it
made the leap
the delayed trip follows months of
diplomatic wrangling
china initially denied entry to the
scientists
it argues that the virus may have
originated elsewhere
for more let's bring in dale fisher
infectious disease specialists at the
national university of singapore he's
also
head of the who's global outbreak alert
and response network thank you so much
for making the time to speak with us
here on dw news we understand that you
were part of the w.h.o china joint
mission last year
as we've been hearing another who team
arrived today in wuhan
what are they looking for
well they're obviously trying to to find
the origins of the virus which is
obviously a very complex mission um
we chose to not address this a year ago
because we
prioritized more in terms of the
response understanding the virus the
disease
the the interventions that could work so
so this is
uh now uh in a more
elective way i'm going to look at this
this this will take a little while to to
get to the bottom off
and the mission to establish the origins
you know if we just look at the timeline
here
um you know china earlier um had kept
this initiative
out what sort of challenges has that
presented now to finding out how the art
of the outbreak really started
um so that's not quite true it was uh it
was very much a joint decision that we
would
back in february um prioritize the work
and i think if you look at the
report that we came out with in uh in
february
uh i think it's it's literally full of
uh essential information that's been
used and has stood the test of time
so in fact even back then we were
looking at
some of the data um which china was
producing in terms of
uh swabbing of animals and and trying to
find
intermediate hosts so so this is really
um building uh on a lot of work that's
been done so far
and actually i'd quite dispute the fact
that we're we're losing anything in the
last year
it's uh it's i i don't know if you're
going to get a lot from
looking at a market even back then it's
really about looking at the data
looking at the uh the the pcr results of
of of people of animals
um looking at the environmental swabs
doing all the genotyping
so so the mission really is to to give
it
uh context if you like it's um
it's important to go there but actually
i think a lot of the work
will be done inside and looking at
looking at data okay got it um tell us a
little bit more about um
what what you see happening um you know
in the country right now because we've
we've had some reports of the spike in
infections
and lockdowns in several areas of china
what more can you tell us about that and
what you might be seeing also in the
region more broadly
yeah it's a it's a good point uh but
actually china has
uh if if you plot uh china over the last
year there was obviously that
huge effort to to to bring under control
the the nation widespread which was
obviously focused in
in in wuhan and hubei but but in fact
every province was
was affected uh probably in the in the
triple digits and that that massive
nationwide wide lockdown but since then
they've had
several other um clusters
now there are obviously a couple of
theories and
everyone will be aware of the theory of
importation on fresh and frozen food
um uh the uh the other theory of course
is could it have just been in a in a
traveler that
that perhaps had a false negative test
on on clearing quarantine sort of things
so
so somehow as we've seen in many
countries it can
uh infiltrate the borders and and cause
clusters
and and china's response has always been
very aggressive
uh as we know it's uh it does lock downs
it isolates
communities it does mass swabbing in the
order of millions of people
as an adjunct in into the the contact
tracing and the quarantining and
and the serial testing of contact so
it's
uh china's obviously really
learned a harsh lesson from what
happened in wuhan and and even a couple
of cases now
results in a very um dramatic response
so
actually what's happening now i don't
think is uh
significantly different to what we've
seen for the last year in china
dale fisher chair of the global outbreak
alert and response network at the who
thank you so much for joining us
thanks for having me back and elsewhere
in the world germany has recorded its
highest 24-hour death toll in the
pandemic so far
the public health agency for infectious
diseases the robert koch institute
reported almost 1250 deaths in a single
day
its president called upon employers to
allow more work from home warning that
the new coronavirus variant presented
a serious threat
it is possible that the situation will
get worse
that's why it is all the more important
that we consistently adhere to the
current measures
we must prevent the new covert 19
variant from spreading
unnecessary travel should be avoided all
cases of this strain that we're
currently aware of in germany are
because of travel
and meanwhile the who is holding an
emergency meeting to discuss the new
variant of the coronavirus
there are concerns that the variants may
be much more infectious than the first
strain that emerged in china
and could potentially render some
vaccines less effective
global virus cases now stand at over 90
million
with some 2 million dead several
countries are experiencing
their worst day yet of the pandemic
at this london hospital doctors are
treating
three times the usual number of patients
in the intensive care unit
they say they are struggling to cope
there's just so many people to be seen
and as soon as one person leaves it
seems to just be
someone comes straight back in um
staff wise we're stretched
we're probably the hardest we're ever
going to work in our career
a sharp increase in serious covert 19
cases and
record deaths come a month after a new
variant of the coronavirus was detected
in the uk
many countries have since restricted
travel due to the british variant
but it still spread to at least 50
territories
according to the world health
organization
other new variants have also been
reported including in south africa and
brazil
the consequence of an ever-changing
virus
it is inevitable that the virus is
evolving
and the more the more it spreads in an
uncontrolled manner in many places
across the world
the more chances we're giving the virus
to evolve
eerily empty streets again a feature of
countries worldwide
as governments extend or ramp up
restrictions to try and limit the spread
of the virus variants
while authorities say there's no
evidence the british and south african
variants make the virus more severe
they share a common trait that's
believed to make them much more
contagious