A team of 10 international scientists will travel to the Chinese city of Wuhan next month to investigate the origins of Covid-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
China has not opposed an independent investigation, although the WHO has been negotiating for access to the city for a number of months.
The virus is thought to have come from a market in the city selling animals.
But the search for the source has led to tensions, notably with the US.
President Donald Trump's administration has accused China of trying to conceal the initial outbreak.
What is the aim of the investigation?
A biologist on the team travelling to Wuhan told the Associated Press news agency that the WHO was not seeking to apportion blame, but rather to prevent future outbreaks.
"It's really not about finding a guilty country," Fabian Leendertz of Germany's Robert Koch Institute said.
"It's about trying to understand what happened and then see if, based on those data, we can try to reduce the risk in the future."
Dr Leendertz said the aim was to find out when the virus began circulating and whether or not it originated in Wuhan.
The mission was expected to last four or five weeks, he added.
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