Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

WHO Team to Search for SARS-CoV-2 Source

The World Health Organization is to send a team of investigators to Wuhan, China early next year to investigate the source of SARS-CoV-2, Reuters reports.

China, it notes, first informed the WHO of pneumonia-causing illness in the region about a year ago, though the origins of the virus are unclear. Similar viruses have been uncovered in bats, suggesting them as a possible source for SARS-CoV-2, though researchers suspect the virus may have spent time in another animal host before jumping to humans.

The WHO investigators represent the second phase of the investigation, as the first phase was conducted by researchers in China, Reuters says. It adds that the WHO plans to send between 12 and 15 investigators to spend six weeks in the region to collect samples from people and animals for additional testing.

"When we are doing animal surveillance, it's difficult, it's rather like looking for a needle in a haystack," Keith Hamilton from the World Organization for Animal Health, who is to be part of the team, says, according to Reuters.

The Scan

Study Examines Insights Gained by Adjunct Trio RNA Sequencing in Complex Pediatric Disease Cases

Researchers in AJHG explore the diagnostic utility of adding parent-child RNA-seq to genome sequencing in dozens of families with complex, undiagnosed genetic disease.

Clinical Genomic Lab Survey Looks at Workforce Needs

Investigators use a survey approach in Genetics in Medicine Open to assess technologist applications, retention, and workforce gaps at molecular genetics and clinical cytogenetics labs in the US.

Study Considers Gene Regulatory Features Available by Sequence-Based Modeling

Investigators in Genome Biology set sequence-based models against observational and perturbation assay data, finding distal enhancer models lag behind promoter predictions.

Genetic Testing Approach Explores Origins of Blastocyst Aneuploidy

Investigators in AJHG distinguish between aneuploidy events related to meiotic missegregation in haploid cells and those involving post-zygotic mitotic errors and mosaicism.