COVID origin: WHO to end research into unlikely Wuhan lab leak theory

World Health Organization investigators said Tuesday they would no longer pursue research into whether the coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. Peter Ben Embarek, a food safety and animal diseases expert, announced the decision during a press conference to wrap up a visit by an international team of WHO experts to the city where COVID-19 was first identified in December 2019. Embarek said there was not enough evidence to support a hypothesis that the virus escaped from a Chinese biosafety laboratory in Wuhan - the Wuhan Institute of Virology - and that the WHO stood by its previous…