WUHAN, China (CU)_A World Health Organisation team on Friday (Jan 29) commenced field visits in the central city of Wuhan, where COVID-19 was first detected more than a year ago.
The team members held their first in-person meetings with Chinese officials at a hotel, followed by a visit to the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, from where Beijing says the first infections were reported back then as “pneumonia of unknown origin”.
“All hypotheses are on the table as the team follows the science in their work to understand the origins of the COVID19 virus,” WHO tweeted. The Agency said the team has requested “detailed underlying data” regarding the outbreak and planned on meeting with early responders and some of the first COVID-19 patients in the country.
The team will also visit technical institutions and laboratories such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, as well as the Huanan Seafood Market, which is linked to many of the first cases.
Authorities in Beijing have promoted theories, with little evidence, that the outbreak may be linked to imports of frozen seafood tainted with the virus, although this notion has been widely rejected by international experts and agencies.
Scientists say the WHO team may also focus its investigation on the virology institute in Wuhan, which has built an archive of genetic information about bat Coronaviruses after the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
The members of the team spent the past two weeks in quarantine according local regulations, during which they communicated with Chinese officials by videoconferences to lay the groundwork for field visits.
Earlier this month, four members of the public health agency who were due to investigate the origins of the pandemic were denied entry to China, which sparked widespread criticism within the international community.
The team’s mission is said to be politically charged, as China seeks to avoid blame for alleged missteps in its early response to the outbreak, while the WHO itself has also been criticised for its delay in declaring a global emergency.
“The global pandemic alert system is not fit for purpose,” an interim report issued by an independent panel commissioned by the WHO said. “The World Health Organization has been underpowered to do the job.”
The first clusters of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan in late 2019, and China has since reported more than 89,000 infections and 4,600 virus-induced deaths.
