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Members of the World Health Organization team depart from the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital. Photo: AP

WHO investigators meet Wuhan hospital leaders on day two of Covid-19 mission – but afternoon will be spent ‘visiting museums’

  • Investigators meet medics at two hospitals at the centre of the initial outbreak, then visit museums and hold discussions, according to state media
  • The mission to find the origin of the coronavirus took months to get going, heightening concerns over transparency
A World Health Organization team visited one of the first hospitals in Wuhan to treat patients with Covid-19, on the second day of a long-delayed and politically charged investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

The delegation of 13 international experts on Saturday morning met leaders from the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital.

One of the team, Peter Daszak, an expert on disease ecology and president of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, tweeted that the visit was an “important opportunity to talk directly [with] medics who were on the ground at that critical time fighting COVID!”

Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist from the Erasmus University Medical Centre, also took to Twitter to say that the stories she heard from their visit to the Jinyintan hospital were “quite similar to what I have heard from our [intensive care unit] ICU doctors”.

WHO team visits hospital that treated first Covid-19 cases in China’s Wuhan

It was followed by a visit to the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, where Zhang Jixian has been credited by state media with being the first doctor to report cases of the then-unknown virus to her superiors in late December 2019.

Global Times, a Chinese state-run tabloid, reported on Saturday that the WHO team would spend the rest of their second day on the ground visiting unspecified museums, before holding “more discussions this evening”.

The team began the fieldwork in their month-long mission in Wuhan on Friday by meeting Chinese scientists – including Liang Wannian, a senior official at the National Health Commission who oversaw China’s virus response last year – to discuss their plans to visit laboratories, markets and hospitals in the city.

02:33

Coronavirus: WHO team visits Wuhan hospital as it probes origins of Covid-19 pandemic

Coronavirus: WHO team visits Wuhan hospital as it probes origins of Covid-19 pandemic

The WHO team’s visit, which is taking place more than a year after the first cases of the disease were officially reported in Wuhan, and has been six months in the making.

The delays in getting the mission under way have raised questions over whether it is starting too late and heightened concerns over transparency amid criticism that the Chinese authorities have stifled domestic reporting and research into the coronavirus and its origins.

Scientists are still unclear on the exact origins of the deadly virus, but most believe it spread to humans from animals, probably a bat, perhaps through an intermediary host.

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The team – comprising public health experts, animal health specialists and virus hunters from 10 countries – underwent a mandatory 14-day quarantine period after arriving in Wuhan on January 14.

They are expected to visit the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market and Wuhan’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention lab, according to the WHO.

“All hypotheses are on the table as the team follows the science in their work to understand the origins of the #COVID19 virus”, the WHO tweeted earlier this week. “They will speak with early responders and some of the first #COVID19 patients.”

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The WHO team was initially denied entry early this year but were later allowed to land in China “after consultation” between Beijing and the global health agency.

Critics have accused the WHO of deferring to Beijing during the pandemic, including being slow to warn that the virus was transmissible between humans and excessively praising China’s control of the virus.

Chinese state media has also been keen to promote theories that the coronavirus had originated in countries other than China, including the conspiracy theory that the virus came from a US army installation.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: WHO team meets hospital leaders on day two of mission
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