A visit which promises to be already under high tension.

China said on Wednesday January 6 that negotiations were continuing with the World Health Organization (WHO), while a team that was to investigate the origin of the pandemic still does not have all the necessary visas .

"The pandemic in the world is still very serious, and China is also doing everything possible to prevent and control it," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters.

It is "not only a question of visa", she assured. 

The spokeswoman said China and the WHO were continuing discussions about "the exact date and modalities of the expert group's visit."

A little over a year after the discovery of the first cases in the Chinese region of Wuhan, ten eminent scientists, chosen by the WHO after a long selection process, are to travel to China to try to trace the origins of the virus to to know how it was transmitted to humans.

A visit under high tension

But this visit is ultra-sensitive for the Chinese regime, anxious to avoid any responsibility for the epidemic which has killed more than 1.8 million people on the surface of the globe.

On Tuesday, the head of the UN agency announced that the WHO investigative team was on its way to China but had not received all the necessary permits, saying "very disappointed".

"Today we learned that Chinese officials have not yet finalized the necessary permits for the team's arrival in China," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.

"I am very disappointed with this news, given that two members had already started their trip and others were unable to travel at the last minute", he added in a very rare movement of humor to against Beijing.

By his side, WHO health emergencies manager Michael Ryan said he hoped it was "just a logistical and bureaucratic problem that we can resolve quickly."

He explained that one of the two experts had to turn back while the other waited in a third country.

The origin of the virus "incredibly difficult" to find

Epidemic requires, the experts will have to undergo a quarantine of two weeks on their arrival.

They will have three to four weeks to investigate.

They could thus go to Wuhan around January 20, a year just after the quarantine of this metropolis of 11 million inhabitants. 

January 20 is also the date Donald Trump is due to leave the White House and some observers assume that Beijing may have wanted to wait for his departure before the actual start of the investigation, so as not to give the impression of giving in to the president's demands. republican.

The deadline imposed by China to accept an independent investigation means that the first traces of the infection will be difficult for researchers to find.

"I am not optimistic. They will arrive after the battle," warns infectious disease specialist Gregory Gray of Duke University in the United States.

"It will be incredibly difficult to find the origin of the virus", abounds Ilona Kickbusch, of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

Scientists generally believe that the original host of the virus is a bat, but the intermediate animal that allowed human contamination is unknown. 

"The objective is not to designate a guilty country"

For the organization, accused by the Trump administration of pro-Chinese tendencies, there is no doubt that its experts will be able to investigate freely, even if Beijing has still not confirmed that Wuhan was indeed on the program of the visit. 

"The team will go to Wuhan, that's the objective of the mission," Michael Ryan said in mid-December.

"We will work with our Chinese colleagues, they will not (...) be supervised by Chinese officials", he assured.

"The objective is not to designate a country or an authority guilty", declared for his part one of the members of the team, Fabian Leendertz, of the Robert Koch Institute in Germany.

“It is to understand what happened to prevent it from happening again”.

If the investigation were to be obstructed by the authorities, "it would have a negative impact on the political and scientific reputation of China", warns Professor Gray.

With AFP

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