‘Although the team concluded that a leak from a Wuhan laboratory was the least likely hypothesis for the virus that causes COVID-19, Tedros said the issue required further investigation, potentially with more missions to China. "I do not believe that this assessment was extensive enough," he told member states in remarks released by the WHO. "Further data and studies will be needed to reach more robust conclusions."
‘The WHO team's leader, Peter Ben Embarek, told a press briefing it was "perfectly possible" the virus had been circulating in November or October 2019 around Wuhan, and so potentially spreading abroad earlier than documented so far. "We got access to quite a lot of data in many different areas, but of course there were areas where we had difficulties getting down to the raw data and there are many good reasons for that," he said, citing privacy laws and other restrictions.’
Read here (Reuters, Mar 31, 2021)
