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 The One Health High-Level Expert Panel was an initiative launched by
France and Germany late last year, and held its inaugural meeting
this week.
It will advise the WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the
World Organization for Animal Health and the United Nations
Environment Programme on developing "risk assessment and
surveillance frameworks" and establish "good practices to prevent
and prepare for zoonotic outbreaks."
The panel will also consider potential transmission risks in food
production and distribution, urbanisation and the construction of
infrastructure, international travel and trade and activities that
lead to biodiversity loss and climate change, the WHO said in a
press release.
The panel will publish its first recommendations later this year.
The global COVID-19 pandemic is widely believed to have originated
in wildlife trading networks in China and southeast Asia. The
closest known genetic match of the coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2
has been found in bats.
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 A joint study into the origins
of COVID-19 by China and WHO all but ruled out
the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked from
a laboratory known to be studying bat
coronaviruses, saying the most probable route of
transmission was an as yet unidentified
intermediary species.
China, where the COVID-19 outbreak began late in
2019, has already banned most types of wildlife
trade and consumption and is also setting up
ecological "security barriers" to keep humans
out of animal habitats.
The WHO says three quarters of all emerging
infectious diseases originate in animals.
(Reporting by David Stanway; editing by Carmel
Crimmins)
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