By Kaveesha Fernando
WUHAN, China (CWBN)_ International media reported last week that the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that 10 scientists from several countries will travel to Wuhan, China next month in order to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 virus and how it was transmitted to humans. However, it appears that China has begun to oppose the trip as it draws closer.
A popular news agency reported today (December 28) that Chinese state media has been reporting an alternative narrative; cherry-picking data from prominent international studies looking into the virus in order to support theories which paint the Chinese government in a more positive light.
Xinhua, a Chinese state news agency, reportedly broadcast the news that an Italian academic publication reported the discovery that lung cancer patients had COVID-19 antibodies in late 2019. Similarly, the Chinese state-run tabloid Global Times is reported to have suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in the United States and not in Wuhan, China. An analysis of wastewater in Spain reportedly suggests that COVID-19 was present in early March. State media is also reported to have linked frozen food with the alleged origin of the virus outside of China following the discovery that external packaging of imported products had traces of COVID-19. Chief Epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention Dr Wu Zunyou also touted the theory, the Global Times is said to have reported.
However, Assistant Research Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security Claire Standley reportedly stated that such claims do not support the Chinese government’s theory that the virus did not originate in China. The report indicates that according to Standley, the serological testing (searching for virus antibodies) conducted by these studies have the potential to cross-react with antibodies from other coronaviruses, thus making them less reliable. Coronaviruses (the group of viruses which COVID-19 belongs to) have been present for years before the COVID-19 virus emerged; some strains of the common cold are also caused by a coronavirus.
Standley reportedly stated that low-level transmission of the virus may have occurred outside of China, but that it does not mean that the virus originated outside of China but rather that it is highly likely that transmission of the virus outside of China began earlier than experts initially believed.
