WHO, 중국에 코로나19 기원 조사팀 파견<br /><br />It's been around four months since the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.<br />With the virus showing no sign of abating,... the global health body warned countries not to let their guard down and retain some lockdown measures.<br />Meanwhile,... an advance team of specialists have left for China to set up an investigation into what caused the disease.<br />Oh Soo-young has the full story.<br />Global health experts have headed to China to set up an investigation into what caused the novel coronavirus.<br />The World Health Organization said on Friday that two of its specialists in animal health and epidemiology left for China to work with local scientists on organising the probe.<br />The two specialists were not named by the agency.<br />According to WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus,... the advance team will study how the virus jumped from animals to humans.<br />The two scientists also plan to determine the scope and itinerary of the investigation.<br />COVID-19 is widely believed to have originated from a wholesale market in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year,... showing many similarities to a virus found in bats.<br />The WHO team is expected to study whether there had been an intermediary species that carried the virus and transmitted it to humans.<br />This comes as the global health body warned that the pandemic is "not under control," with the total number of infection cases worldwide having doubled in the last six weeks.<br />Speaking at a news conference Friday in Geneva, emergencies director Mike Ryan warned governments not to let their guards down,... as infection cases can spread like "forest fire."<br />He said it's "very unlikely" that countries around the world can eradicate COVID-19,... emphasizing some lockdown measures must remain in place.<br />He said countries must have firm surveillance like contact tracing and aggressive testing to stop small clusters of the infection becoming large and uncontrollable.<br />The director pointed out while some nations have effectively controlled the spread,... there's "always the risk" of imported cases.<br />According to the WHO, there have been over 11-point-8 million cases of COVID-19,... and more than 544-thousand deaths worldwide caused by the epidemic.<br />Oh Soo-young, Arirang News.<br />
