World health organisation led team is expected to go to china in the first week of January to investigate the origins of virus that sparked the Covid-19 pandemic.
“A team of 10 international scientists will travel to the Chinese city of Wuhan next month to investigate the origins of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19)”, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
The origin of the virus was traced in the so-called "wet market" in Wuhan, Hubei province, China and it was suggested that this was where it made the leap from animals to humans.
But experts now think the market may not have been the origin of the outbreak, but rather a place where it was amplified.
"It's really not about finding a guilty country. It's about trying to understand what happened and then see if, based on those data, we can try to reduce the risk in the future", said Fabian Leendertz of Germany's Robert Koch Institute(member of WHO)
Beijing has been reluctant to agree to an independent inquiry and it has taken many months of negotiations for the WHO to be allowed access to the city.
President Donald Trump's administration accused China of trying to conceal the initial outbreak.
Research suggests that coronaviruses capable of infecting humans may have been circulating undetected in bats for decades.
Last December, a Chinese doctor at Wuhan Central Hospital - Li Wenliang - tried to warn fellow medics about a possible outbreak of a new disease, but was told by police to "stop making false comments" and was investigated for "spreading rumours".
Li died in February after contracting the virus while treating patients in the city.
