The Chinese government froze meaningful efforts to trace the origins of the pandemic, despite publicly declaring that it supported an open scientific inquiry, an AP investigation has found.
A security person moves journalists away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology after a World Health Organization team arrived for a field visit in Wuhan in China's Hubei province on Feb. 3, 2021.
Unlike in the U.S., there is virtually no public debate in China about whether the virus came from nature or from a lab leak. In fact, there is little public discussion at all about the source of the disease, first detected in the central city of Wuhan. But different leaders of both China and WHO, China’s quest for control of its researchers, and global tensions have all led to silence when it comes to searching for COVID-19’s origins. Governments in Asia are pressuring scientists not to look for the virus for fear it could be traced inside their borders.
The first publicly known search for the virus took place on Dec. 31, 2019, when Chinese Center for Disease Control scientists visited the Wuhan market where many early COVID-19 cases surfaced. Ben Embarek declined to comment. Another WHO staffer at the Geneva meeting in late January 2020 confirmed Ben Embarek’s comments.
When health officials from Beijing arrived in Wuhan on Dec. 31, they decided to disinfect the market before collecting samples, destroying critical information about the virus. Gao Fu, then head of the China CDC, mentioned it to an American collaborator. But perhaps local officials simply feared for their jobs, with memories of firings after the 2003 SARS outbreak still vivid, said Ray Yip, the founding head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outpost in China.virus
The focus turned to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a high-level lab that experimented with some of the world’s most dangerous viruses. Paul Offit looks back on COVID-19, misinformation, and how public health lost the public’s trust in new book Instead, Liang Wannian, a politician in the Communist Party hierarchy, took charge of the international delegation. Liang is an epidemiologist close to top Chinese officials and China's Foreign Ministryimplausible theory that the virus came from contaminated frozen food
“It is remarkable how much knowledge about a new virus has been gained in such a short time,” read the final report, which was reviewed by China’s top health official before it went to Tedros.
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