MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th February, 2021) The world's earliest identified COVID-19 patients in Wuhan, China were ordinary people who did not have special habits such as hiking in the mountains or having exotic pets at home, the team leader of the the World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 origin-tracing mission said on Tuesday.
"It was in a way fascinating to realize that these people [the first identified COVID-19 patients] are not holding very exciting clues. When we talked to one of the first cases who had onset symptoms in early December, when you talk to one of these cases, you immediately think they must have some very special habits, hiking in the mountains, [or] having special wild pets at home. All these kinds of ideas pop up," Peter Ben Embarek, the head of the WHO mission in Wuhan, said during a press conference.
However, these first patients do not have any special history of interests, the WHO official continued.
"And then you realize they're very much like all of us, no special particular history of interests, spending most of their days on the internet, doing the same activities, sports and jobs, office work type of jobs, as many of us do. It's also illustrating how complicated this work [origin-tracing] is," the expert added.
The WHO team said during the press conference earlier that COVID-19 most likely came from intermediary animal hosts that carried the new coronavirus.
