The World Health Organization has assembled a team of epidemiologists and virologists from among their Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) to investigate the origin of COVID-19.  The team will comprise specialists from the U.S., Denmark, the United Kingdom, Australia, Russia, Japan and other nations.  Prominent participants include:

• Professor Marion Koopmans of the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.  In 2013, Dr. Koopmans was instrumental in demonstrating that dromedary camels were an intermediate host in Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) caused by a coroavirus.  Koopmans is also involved in COVID-19 outbreaks among mink farms.
• Hung Nguyen, affiliated to the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, is an acknowledged food safety researcher and has investigated how pathogens spread in wet markets, processing plants, and live animal transport.
• Dr. Peter Daszak, President of Echo Health Alliance in New York City, who has studied Coronaviruses for over a decade, has close ties with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
• Dr. Fabian Leendertz, with the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, who completed critical studies on the origin of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Guinea.

The team will initially visit Wuhan, where COVID-19 emerged, but will expand across China and other nations as necessary.

There is some criticism of WHO in restricting invitations to join the study group to members of GOARN.  Dr. Christian Drosten, of the Charite Hospital in Berlin, considers that there are many researchers with experience who were excluded from the original list of invitees.  Dr. Angela Rasmussen, of Georgetown University, considers that although the team is highly qualified it is dominated by men and workers from the EU and could have been more inclusive by selecting representatives from among the larger global scientific community.  In contrast, other scientists including Dr. Martin Beer, a virologist at the German Federal Research Institute for Animal Health, considers that the team represents an excellent choice based on their individual and collective field and laboratory experience.

The origin of COVID-19 is currently undetermined, but is presumed to have originated in bats.  This hypothesis will be evaluated along with other theories, including escape from the Wuhan Veterinary Research Institute, an as yet unfounded speculation that regrettably became politicized in the U.S.