The World Health Organization's advisory group studying the origins of COVID-19 said bats likely carried an ancestor of the coronavirus that may have then spilled over into a mammal sold at a market, but added that more data is needed to study how the virus spread to people, The New York Times reported June 9.
The organization asked the group, the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, for insights on studying coronavirus’s origins and to examine the emergence of future pathogens. It is composed of scientists from the U.S., China and two dozen other countries.
Independent experts said it was unclear how the team could help the WHO work around political barriers in China that have impeded on the publication of most information that would depict the virus's origins within the country, according to the Times.
"The lack of political cooperation from China continues to stifle any meaningful progress," Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, told the Times.
One mystery the team is trying to unravel involves a potential lab leak. An earlier team's report said the possibility was "extremely unlikely," and the newest team uncovered no evidence pointing to one – but leaders said "they wanted to evaluate any evidence that emerges in the future."