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 Dominic Dwyer, a microbiologist and infectious diseases expert, said
the team in Wuhan had received the access it requested from Chinese
authorities as it tries to understand the early days of the novel
coronavirus outbreak first identified in Wuhan.
"Everybody knows how it really exploded out of Huanan market in
Wuhan, but the key is what was happening around that time and
before," Dwyer said.
The origin of the coronavirus has become highly politicised
following accusations that China was not transparent in its early
handling of the outbreak. Beijing has pushed the idea that the virus
could have originated elsewhere.
Dwyer, an Australian specialist in HIV/AIDS who previously worked
with the WHO during the SARS and avian flu outbreaks, said the
"conundrum" of COVID-19 was that early asymptomatic carriers may not
have known they had it.
"It would be naive to think that we're going to get virus zero,"
Dwyer said. The early cases were identified in November, "but it's
just the bit beforehand that's the very interesting part and the
tricky part and the difficult part".
Dwyer echoed his teammate Peter Daszak, a zoologist and animal
disease expert, in his emphasis on the difficulty of understanding
the disease.
"Even SARS, even Ebola, we have some good ideas, but no one knows,"
Daszak told Reuters on Thursday. "HIV: we don't know the exact
circumstances."
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 The investigators have visited
hospitals, research facilities and the seafood
market where the first outbreak was identified,
although their contacts in Wuhan are limited to
visits organised by their Chinese hosts.
Dwyer said the team had finished its site visits
and was preparing to present its findings as
clearly as possible, given the intense level of
interest, before the team's 28-day visas expire
towards the end of next week.
He said that more work needed to be done
investigating how the virus could have been
transmitted by animals, including bats, as well
as into antibodies to coronavirus in people who
did not show symptoms of the disease.
The short term was "reviewing what we know now
and bringing all that data together and there
are going to be a series of longer term
projects, and this could take some years," Dwyer
said.
(Reporting by David Kirton; Editing by Alex
Richardson)
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