A World Health Organization (WHO)-led international team with experts from the U.S., Germany, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia, Nigeria is now on the ground in China, according to the Director-General Tedros Adhanom.

Experts in the fields of epidemiology, virology, clinical management, outbreak control and public health will work with their Chinese counterparts to study the outbreak, including the severity of disease, how contagious the virus is and the impact of the measures that China has taken, Tedros said on Wednesday.

On Monday, the advance team started a field inspection on the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus outbreak in Beijing.

They visited the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, a hospital and a community in downtown Beijing to learn more about the epidemic situation and prevention measures in the country's capital city. They have also done research on medical treatment at designated hospitals, and prevention work in communities.

This is the fourth time WHO experts have done a field inspection in China amid the epidemic, said the organization, adding that they also dispatched a group of experts to Wuhan in January.

Why didn't the WHO expert team go to Wuhan?

In this week's inspection, the expert team went to Beijing, Guangzhou, and Sichuan Province, but missed out the epicenter of the epidemic. 

In response, the UN Resident Coordinator in China told CGTN in an exclusive interview that now, the Wuhan health system is under tremendous pressure and this is not the best time to visit.

He said that all attention should be focused on providing medical protection to the people of Wuhan. He also expressed that "Hopefully, they (members of the expert team) will have the opportunity to visit Wuhan" in the future.