WHO team: Coronavirus unlikely to have leaked from China lab

(AP) — A team of international and Chinese scientists looking for the origins of COVID-19 says the coronavirus most likely appeared in humans after jumping from an animal. The World Health Organization team’s leader said an alternate theory that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab was now considered too improbable to be suggested for future study.

Food safety and animal disease expert Peter Ben Embarek said the WHO team’s visit to Wuhan, China, did not dramatically change the current understanding of the early days of the pandemic. But it did offer more details.

The experts considered several theories for how the virus began infecting humans and grew to a pandemic that has killed more than 2.3 million people.