WHO includes Cuban María Guadalupe Guzmán in expert committee that will investigate the origin of COVID-19

October 14, 2021

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced the composition of its new Scientific Advisory Group on the Origin of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), in which Cuban virologist María Guadalupe Guzmán, along with 25 other experts, will have the mission of continuing to investigate how COVID-19 emerged, among other diseases.

Along with Guzmán, from the Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK), there will be virologists, epidemiologists and other specialists from Brazil, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, Germany, China and Japan, among other countries.

Some of them work in institutions such as the University of Oxford, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Pasteur Institute or the Brazilian Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, according to the list provided by the WHO.

The 26 members must still undergo a final evaluation, in which the WHO will also take into account public assessments of these candidates.

The committee was formed not only to seek the origin of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, for which a mission of WHO experts and other organizations already traveled to China in February of this year, but also to investigate future dangerous pathogens.

"Understanding where these pathogens come from is essential to prevent future outbreaks with epidemic and pandemic potential," stated WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement, who predicted that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, "will not be the last to emerge."

At the end of September, Cuban scientist María Guadalupe Guzmán was awarded one of the L'Oréal-Unesco prizes for Women and Science for her work on dengue, a viral disease that infects between 50 and 100 million people worldwide each year.

"Her findings have made it possible to deepen understanding of the origin of dengue, the treatment of symptoms and its prevention," stated the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) in a statement this Thursday, which awards the prize together with French cosmetics company L'Oréal.

Guzmán, director of the IPK Research Center, headquartered in Havana, was the award recipient for the Latin America and Caribbean region.