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Our group was convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) in October 2020. We have been the designated independent international members of a joint WHO–China team tasked with understanding the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Our report was published this March1. It was meant to be the first step in a process that has stalled. Here we summarize the scientific process so far, and call for action to fast-track the follow-up scientific work required to identify how COVID-19 emerged, which we set out in this article.

The window of opportunity for conducting this crucial inquiry is closing fast: any delay will render some of the studies biologically impossible. Understanding the origins of a devastating pandemic is a global priority, grounded in science.

The mandate

We, all the members of the international expert team, each submitted detailed, confidential statements to the WHO on potential conflicts of interest, including funding, collaborative studies, public statements and other issues around the origins of COVID-19 that could be perceived as conflicts. After the WHO had reviewed these, team members were appointed in their individual capacity, not as representatives of their employers.

So far, our mission has been guided by terms of reference agreed between the WHO and China in 2020, before our involvement1. These terms tasked us with making a detailed reconstruction of the early phase of the pandemic, beginning in Wuhan, China, where the first known cases were reported. Our mandate was to conduct a collaborative study with leading scientists in China to review data they had generated on the basis of initial questions from the WHO. We refined the generic list of questions described in the mandate into a detailed workplan described in the mission report1 (see also Annex A;