Coronavirus: scientists say US-China ‘political drama’ is impeding progress on tracing Covid-19’s path
- Requests for early virus samples from China likely would have been more productive coming from medical experts, not the US State Department
- ‘Infectious disease … doesn’t respect the political clashes between different nations, so we need to figure out a way to work together’
US government requests from China for early coronavirus samples make sense as part of efforts to bring the pandemic under control and avoid future ones, but the “political drama” around the efforts is undermining progress, two public health experts warned.
RNA viruses like Sars-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, mutate about once a month, making them “essentially a clock that enables one to extrapolate when the virus actually evolved”, said Dr Barry Bloom, an infectious disease specialist and professor of public health at Harvard University.
“Some mutations become fingerprints that let you know that the viruses in the early outbreaks in Seattle came directly from China, whereas those in New York City and much of the rest of the US actually came from Europe by travellers,” he said.
Understanding how the virus evolved and knowing how it entered the US, therefore, would help public health officials plan more effectively as the contagion continues to spread. Covid-19 has killed almost 76,000 people in the US since the first patient in the country was identified in January, and the number of cases, now at more than 1.25 million, continues to rise.
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For weeks, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said repeatedly that Beijing has declined to provide virus samples taken from patients when the contagion began spreading in China late last year. He has also accused Chinese authorities of destroying samples, without providing evidence.