WHO investigators visit hospital that treated first Covid-19 cases in China’s ground zero Wuhan
- First face-to-face meetings with Chinese scientists held on Friday, the UN agency tweets after team members finish quarantine
- Experts intend to visit Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where the first cluster of infections was reported in December 2019
“Extremely important first site visit,” tweeted disease ecologist Peter Daszak, president of the US-based EcoHealth Alliance. “We are in the hospital that treated some of the first known cases of Covid-19, meeting with the actual clinicians and staff who did this work, having [an] open discussion about the details of their work.
“These are critical meetings that help us better understand what happened in the early days of Covid-19.”
The visit to the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine followed meetings with Chinese scientists earlier in the day, Reuters reported. According to China’s account, the director of the hospital’s respiratory and critical care medicine department, Zhang Jixian, was the first doctor to report the then-unknown disease.
The WHO team started the field portion of their month-long mission on Friday by discussing with Chinese counterparts their plans to visit laboratories, markets and hospitals.
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WHO health experts arrive in Covid-19 epicentre Wuhan to investigate origins of coronavirus