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
“All hypotheses are on the table as the team follows the science in their work to understand the origins of [the virus].”
The question of how and where the coronavirus originated has taken on a political dimension after recriminations flew between Washington and Beijing.
The WHO has stressed that its mission is not about apportioning blame and that finding out how an infectious disease crosses from animals to humans can take years.
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Coronavirus: A look inside China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology
The WHO said the group – comprising public health experts, animal health specialists and virus hunters from 10 countries – had requested further information from Chinese counterparts, including detailed underlying data about the outbreak, which has gone on to infect more than 101 million people around the world.
“First face-to-face meeting with our colleagues. Correction: face mask to face mask, given the medical restrictions. Discussing our visiting programme,” virologist Marion Koopmans, of the Erasmus University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, tweeted on Friday.
The scientists plan to visit markets, hospitals and labs including the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
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The team will also speak to early responders and some of the first patients known to be infected by the coronavirus.
“Their every activity must conform to the investigation into scientifically tracing the origins of the coronavirus, the highest priorities of which are to prevent future risks and [protect lives],” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Thursday during a daily media briefing.
China’s National Health Commission head Ma Xiaowei discussed the mission with WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a telephone call on Wednesday.
“I asked that the international scientists get the support, access and data needed, and the chance to engage fully with their Chinese counterparts,” Tedros later tweeted.
Earlier this month, China’s delay in granting permission for team members’ arrival drew rare criticism from the WHO director general.
The mission, triggered by a resolution passed last May, is intended to include examining medical records for evidence of any early cases that were missed, testing stored medical samples, and documenting the animal species sold at the Huanan market and its supply chains.
