The World Health Organization insisted Monday that the international investigation into the Covid-19 pandemic's origins, set to start this week in China, was not looking for "somebody to blame".
WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said the delayed mission -- finally given the green light by Beijing -- was about science, not politics.
Ten international experts will visit China from Thursday to probe the origins of the new coronavirus, more than a year after the pandemic began and amid accusations that Beijing has tried to thwart the investigation.
"Understanding the origins of disease is not about finding somebody to blame," Ryan told a press conference in Geneva.
"It is about finding the scientific answers about the very important interface between the animal kingdom and the human kingdom.
"It is an absolute requirement that we understand that interface.
"We are looking for the answers here, not culprits and not people to blame."
Experts say solving the mystery of how the virus first jumped from animals to humans is crucial to preventing another pandemic.
The mission will visit Wuhan in China, where the first cluster of cases was detected in December 2019.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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