WHO stresses need to find source of coronavirus

Pinning down the source of the coronavirus pandemic should help in working out how COVID-19 has “invaded the human species” so quickly, a senior WHO official says.

Sylvie Briand, the WHO’s director of infectious hazard management, says it is crucial to know the origin of the virus “to understand how it has evolved.

“It is a virus of animal origin transmitted to humans. And so we have to try to understand how the adaptation of this virus allowed it to invade the human species,” she tells AFP outside the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva.

Director of Pandemic and Epidemic Diseases Department at the World Health Organization (WHO) Sylvie Briand outside the UN agency’s headquarters on May 12, 2020 in Geneva (Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP)

Retracing the origin of the virus will “prevent the phenomenon from happening again — and avoid ping-pong” transmission between humans and animals, she says.

— AFP