Apolitical scientific tracing of virus urged after earlier cases surface

Chinese experts urged international communities to carry out apolitical scientific research to trace the origin of the virus, rather than passing the buck to China for political purposes, as some countries including France and the US have reportedly discovered COVID-19 cases that occurred earlier than the first cases they previously reported and showed no direct relation with China.

Tracing the origins through scientific investigation would help in the development of a vaccine, said Cui Hongjian, director of EU studies at the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing.

It would also dispel rumors and avoid politicizing the issue, which will lead the international community to cooperate in the fight against the pandemic, Cui said, calling for apolitical scientific research to trace the origins of the virus.

The remarks came after a French hospital, which has retested old samples from pneumonia patients, discovered that it treated a patient with COVID-19 on December 27, nearly a month before the French government confirmed its first cases, Reuters reported on Monday.

Yves Cohen, head doctor of two hospitals in Paris, told

French media outlet BFM TV on Sunday that it was too early to know if the patient was France’s “patient zero.”

Cohen noted the patient had not made any trips and his only contact was with his wife who was not infected, urging the local health authority to investigate.

US media outlet CNN reported on April 22 that two Californians with no “significant travel history” died of the novel coronavirus in early and midFebruary – three weeks before the first previously known US COVID-19 death.

Such reports support the theory that the virus had multiple birthplaces around the world, said Yang Zhanqiu, deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Yang said that with the several cases now standing as the countries’ first documented novel coronavirus cases, it would not be surprising if some cases in late 2019 diagnosed as influenza were connected with the virus.

Scientific research showed the coronavirus had genetic differences in different regions around the globe, Yang noted.

Yang refuted the theory that the virus mutated as it spread from China to other countries.

“There was no way so many mutations could occur in such a short period,” Yang said.