The Chinese government froze meaningful efforts to trace the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, despite publicly declaring that it supported an open scientific inquiry, an Associated Press investigation has found.
FILE - 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. The hunt for COVID-19 origins has gone dark in China .
Crucial initial efforts were hampered by bureaucrats in Wuhan trying to avoid blame who misled the central government; the central government, which muzzled Chinese scientists and subjected visiting WHO officials to stage-managed tours; and the U.N. health agency itself, which may haveearly opportunities to gather critical information in hopes that by placating China, scientists could gain more access, according to internal materials obtained by AP.
“It’s disturbing how quickly the search for the origins of escalated into politics,” said Mark Woolhouse, a University of Edinburgh outbreak expert. “Now this question may never be definitively answered.”Secrecy clouds the beginning of the outbreak. Even the date when Chinese authorities first started searching for the origins is unclear.
A colleague asked Ben Embarek, who is no longer with WHO, if that seemed unusual. He responded that “it was not routine,” and that the Chinese “must have had some reason” to investigate the market. “We’ll try to figure out what happened and why they did that.” A scientist in China when the outbreak occurred said they heard of a Dec. 25 inspection from collaborating virologists in the country. They declined to be named out of fear of retribution.
Robert Garry, who studies viruses at Tulane University, said a Dec. 25 probe would be “hugely significant,” given what is known about the virus and its spread. On Jan. 20, 2020, a WHO delegation arrived in Wuhan for a two-day mission. China did not approve a visit to the market, but they stopped by a China CDC lab to examine infection prevention and control procedures, according to an internal WHO travel report. WHO’s then-China representative, Dr. Gauden Galea, told colleagues in a private meeting that inquiries about COVID-19’s origins went unanswered.
“There have suggestions that the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab,” Holmes, the Australian virologist, who believed the virus originated in nature, wrote in a Feb. 7, 2020, email. “I do a lot of work in China, and I can you that a lot of people there believe they are being lied to.” Scientists were sidelined and politicians took control. China refused a visa for Ben Embarek, then WHO’s top animal virus expert. The itinerary dropped nearly all items linked to an origins search, according to draft agendas for the trip obtained by the AP. And Gao, the China CDC head who is also a respected scientist tasked with investigating the origins, was left off the schedule.
The new section was so flattering that colleagues emailed Aylward to suggest he “dial it back a bit.”
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