A Japanese expert from the World Health Organization, who visited Wuhan earlier this month, has voiced skepticism about China's insistence that the novel coronavirus originally entered that country from abroad through cold-chain food distribution.
In a recent interview, Ken Maeda, a veterinary microbiologist at Japan's National Institute of Infectious Diseases, also emphasized the importance of additional investigation into key sites at the initial epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The possibility is not so high" that the virus rode into Wuhan on frozen-food packages as China claims, said Maeda, who was one of the members of the WHO team tasked with tracing the origins of the virus in the city along with Chinese experts.