The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that a report that COVID-19 had emerged in December in France, sooner than previously thought, was “not surprising”, and urged countries to investigate any other early suspicious cases.
The disease later identified as COVID-19 was first reported by Chinese authorities to the WHO on Dec. 31 and was not previously believed to have spread to Europe until January.
There is not currently any suggestion that the virus emerged from anywhere other than Wuhan, China. It is thought that, instead, the French case was somehow connected to a person who travelled from there in December before the virus had been identified or reported by China, the WHO spokesman said.
“This gives a whole new picture on everything,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a U.N. briefing in Geneva, referring to the French report.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says his country has evidence that the new coronavirus emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, although scientists have advised the WHO that it is of animal origin.
