Members of the group, all wearing face masks, got onto a bus
which zipped them away from the hotel where they had spent their mandatory
quarantine, according to AFP reporters at the scene.
Wearing masks, they peered at the ranks of waiting media
from the window of a bus which whisked them from the quarantine hotel — although
it was not immediately clear when and where their investigation will start.
The virus is believed to have come from bats and to have
initially spread from a wet market in Wuhan where wild animals were sold as
food.
The WHO insists the visit will be tightly tethered to the
science of how the virus — which has killed more than two million people and
laid waste to the global economy — jumped from animals to humans.
But in a sign of the political baggage attached to their
mission, US President Joe Biden’s new administration weighed in before the
experts had even left their hotel.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, new White House
spokeswoman Jen Psaki said it was “imperative we get to the bottom” of how the
virus appeared and spread worldwide.
Psaki voiced concern over “misinformation” from “some
sources in China” and urged a “robust and clear” probe.
In a mission dogged by delays and obfuscation from their
Chinese hosts, it was not clear what the expert team will be allowed to see in
Wuhan — or what useful evidence remains a year after the outbreak in a country
which has vigorously controlled the narrative of how the pandemic began.
The early days of the outbreak remain among the most
sensitive topics in China today, with the Communist leadership seeking to stamp
out any discussion that shows its governance in a poor light.
Beijing has also sought to seed doubt into the origin story,
floating the unsubstantiated theory that the virus emerged elsewhere.
Another theory, amplified by former US President Donald
Trump, is that it leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan where researchers were
studying coronaviruses.
Relatives of Wuhan’s coronavirus dead have called for a
meeting with the team from the UN health agency, saying they have been facing
new levels of official obstruction since the WHO team arrived.
They accuse the Chinese government of taking down a WeChat
group used by scores of next-of-kin to discuss the outbreak shortly after the
WHO team arrived.
“This shows that (Chinese authorities) are very nervous.
They are afraid that these families will get in touch with the WHO experts,”
said Zhang Hai, 51, whose father died early in the pandemic of suspected
Covid-19.
Relatives accuse the Wuhan city and Hubei provincial
governments of allowing Covid-19 to burst beyond control by trying to conceal
the outbreak when it first emerged in the city in December 2019, then failing
to alert the public and bungling the response.
According to official Chinese figures, it killed nearly
3,900 in Wuhan, accounting for the vast majority of the 4,636 dead China has
reported.
A panel of independent experts concluded this month that
China and the WHO could have acted more quickly to avert catastrophe during the
early stages of the coronavirus outbreak.
-AFP