28 Jan

An international team from the World Health Organization is set to start an investigation in China's Wuhan into how the coronavirus pandemic started.

The team arrived in the capital of the central Hubei Province on January 14. It has since been under quarantine at a hotel in the city while holding online meetings with Chinese experts and others.

The team is expected to launch a full investigation after the two-week quarantine ends on Thursday.

The team plans to inspect a seafood market linked to a number of COVID-19 patients in the early stage of the outbreak and Wuhan Institute of Virology, from which US officials claim the virus may have leaked.

They also plan to interview medical workers in an attempt to determine where the virus originated and what route it took when it spread to humans.

As a year has already passed since the virus started spreading, some WHO officials are expressing doubts about whether the investigation will help identify the virus's origin.

The focus is on how much China will accept requests from the WHO team, such as providing related data.

NHK