China adheres to the principles of openness, transparency, science and cooperation, and fully supports WHO experts to carry out virus traceability work.

CCTV News:The State Council held a press conference on the traceability of Covid-19. Ceng Yixin, deputy director of the National Health and Wellness Commission, said that China adheres to the principles of openness, transparency, science and cooperation and fully supports the work of the WHO expert group.

Ceng Yixin said that on March 30th this year, the World Health Organization officially released the joint research report on the China part of the global traceability research in Covid-19 convened by WHO, and the global traceability research made a good start. Governments, scientists and the media all over the world are very concerned about this report. Over the past few months, more and more scientific evidence shows that this report is valuable, authoritative, and can stand the test of science and history. The conclusion of the report is scientific, and the process of production always adheres to scientific principles.

　　Ceng Yixin introduced,At the beginning of this year, an international expert group of WHO officially came to China to carry out the work of virus traceability and the global research on virus traceability in China. China adheres to the principles of openness, transparency, science and cooperation, and fully supports the work of the WHO expert group. Together with the local government, we do our best to organize and coordinate relevant units to fully meet the requirements of WHO experts’ visits and let WHO experts go to all the units they want, including 9 units including Jinyintan Hospital, South China Seafood Market and Wuhan Virus Research Institute. I met all the people they wanted to see, including medical staff, laboratory personnel, scientific researchers, market managers and merchants, residents, recovered patients, etc. The joint traceability research has a huge workload, and the traceability experts are very hard, but they have carefully analyzed and studied every problem and data, often forgetting to eat and sleep all night. We admire their professionalism and scientific spirit very much, so I would like to express my deep gratitude to the international experts of WHO on behalf of the government of China.

　　Ceng Yixin also introduced.The main conclusions of this study. This traceability research report is the China part of the global traceability research. The expert group draws the following conclusions: The coronaviruses found in bats and pangolins, which are most closely related to Covid-19, have the highest homology with Covid-19 in sequence, but these viruses are still not enough to prove that they are the direct ancestors of Covid-19. Although the homology is high, there is still a certain gap.

Combined with the research results of clinical epidemiology, animal and environmental detection, the joint expert group finally determined several possibilities of virus emergence: first, the direct spillover of zoonotic diseases is "possible to more likely", that is, the direct spillover from animal hosts to people is "possible to more likely". Secondly, it is "probable to very probable" to introduce the virus through an intermediate host. Generally speaking, it means that the natural host of the virus is an animal, and the animal transits to humans through an intermediate host. This is "probable to very probable". Third, it was introduced through the cold chain. In some sporadic epidemics in various places last year, it was found that cold chain transmission might introduce viruses, so it was considered possible. The last possibility, laboratory introduction is "extremely impossible", and the English expression is "Extremely Unlikely".