Wuhan visit ‘righteous, helpful’ to WHO

Scientists deny restrictions, limitations in investigation

The WHO experts are going to the right places for field studies on the origin of the COVID-19 in Wuhan, including the Huanan Seafood Market, hospitals where the early patients were treated and the Wuhan virology lab, which will be helpful for them to get a better understanding of the virus, Chinese experts said, as the team of 13 international scientists officially started their investigation work on Friday.

The WHO experts headed to the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine on Friday where Dr. Zhang Jixian first reported the cases of “what was then known as pneumonia of unknown origin” on December 27, 2019.

“We were at the hospital where the first patient was identified in the last week of December 2019. We also met with staff there, and with one of the earliest known patient,” Peter Ben Embarek, who leads the WHO team, told the Global Times, calling the visit “very informative.”

Visits will include the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Huanan market and the Wuhan CDC laboratory, the WHO said on Thursday, and the experts will also speak to early responders and some of the first COVID-19 patients.

However, some Western media outlets such as the New York Times and the AFP have been hyping the hypothesis that China has been taking charge of this investigation, which may prevent the foreign experts from finding the origin of the virus.

“My understanding is that there will be no restrictions or limitations in working with our Chinese colleagues or in visiting places the joint team deems of interest,” Embarek said.

Letting those experts to three places – Huanan market, Wuhan virology lab and local CDC – represents China’s open and transparent attitude on this matter, as the Huanan market was the place where the earliest case was found, whether we could find more information about earlier cases from there is very important, Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital, told the Global Times on Friday.

What we have done well was reporting these earlier cases and conducting further pathogenic testing, Wang stressed, adding that it would also be a question for the WHO experts to find out if much earlier cases existed and whether they were truly domestically transmitted.

Although the Huanan seafood market has been sealed off, the experts believe that there is still plenty to see and experience there. “[We hope to] understand the setting, see the places where cases were linked, reconstruct the initial event there, search for records of animals, products traded there. And possibly talk to some of the merchants who were there at that time,” Embarek said.

Going to the hospitals that treated earlier patients would help experts get to know more patient information, which will also be helpful for the investigation work, Wang said.

Yang Zhanqiu, a deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, told the Global Times that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has done many studies on seeking a virus on animals. Discussions between Chinese scientists and WHO experts could offer more clues on the origin.

Yang said that seeking the origin of the virus is very serious scientific work which should be conducted in different areas where the virus is spreading, including Europe and the US, at the same time.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian reiterated on Friday that this is an exchange of cooperation on the origin of the coronavirus, which is also part of global research. “This is not a probe,” Zhao said.