WHO rules out virus leak from Wuhan lab
THE coronavirus is unlikely to have leaked from a Chinese lab and is more likely to have jumped to humans from an animal, a World Health Organization team has concluded, an expert said yesterday as the group wrapped up a visit to explore the origins of the virus.
The WHO team that visited central China’s city of Wuhan, where the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in December 2019, is considering several theories on how the disease first ended up in humans, leading to a pandemic that has now killed more than 2.3 million people worldwide.
“Our initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway and one that will require more studies and more specific targeted research,”
WHO food safety and animal diseases expert Peter Ben Embarek, who led the team, said yesterday.
He said that work to identify the origins of the coronavirus points to a natural reservoir in bats, but the absence of bats in the Wuhan area dimmed the likelihood of direct transmission.
Liang Wannian, head of the China side of the joint mission, said animal transmission remained the likely route, but “the reservoir hosts remain to be identified.”
Investigators were also looking for Chinese blood samples that could indicate that the virus was circulating earlier than first thought, Embarek said. “And the conclusion was we did not find evidence of large outbreaks that could be related to cases of COVID-19 prior to December 2019 in Wuhan or elsewhere.”
“However, the findings suggest that the laboratory incidents hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus to the human population” and will not be suggested as an avenue of future study, he said.
The WHO team, which includes experts from 10 countries, arrived in Wuhan from Singapore on January 14. After two weeks of quarantine, it visited key sites including the Huanan seafood market, the location of the first known cluster of infections, as well as the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been involved in coronavirus research.
Transmission through the trade in frozen products was also a possibility, Embarek said. China has repeatedly announced finding the coronavirus traces on imported food packaging.
“We know the virus can survive in conditions that are found in these cold, frozen environments, but we don’t really understand if the virus can transmit to humans” or under which conditions, he told the briefing.
Embarek said it would be worthwhile to explore whether a frozen wild animal in a market setting with the right conditions could be conducive to rapid spread of the virus. However, Embarek said the team’s nearly monthlong investigation in Wuhan had not dramatically changed the picture of the outbreak.
Infectious disease expert Dominic Dwyer, said it would probably take years to fully understand the origins of COVID-19.
“SHANGHAI is a fantastic place to live in and it’s also grown up a lot, compared with when I lived here 20 years ago,” said Elisabeth Staudinger, president of Siemens Healthineers Asia Pacific.
For her, it’s not just a place to live and work in but a place to enjoy.
“Shanghai has become a very livable city. Besides the fantastic food, which comes from any part of the world or the country, I also really like the cultural opportunity. There are so many places that you can go and where you can experience something else — more than just earn your money,” she added.
Staudinger, who is from Austria, is an avid fan of Chinese culture, and has been learning Chinese for more than 20 years. She can now communicate with local colleagues easily in Chinese.
More surprisingly, she is also good at calligraphy.
She said the more she learned, the more she became interested. The years of learning Chinese has also paid her back.
“Being able to read the characters, particularly, gives me a totally different level of access to the country and the people,” she said.
When asked some advice on learning Chinese, Staudinger said there is no easy solution to that.
“Certain things are simple, such as grammar, not as complicated as German. But if you really want to learn Chinese, you should learn characters. To learn characters, there are a lot of disciplines, there is no easy way, you have to sit down to practice and to remember.”
Staudinger shared her vision on the latest trends in the health-care industry as a professional in the sector.
For instance, Siemens Healthineers is looking at ways of how to enable hospitals and doctors to deliver more personalized care to patients. The company is also exploring changing the ways care is delivered and how patients are treated, such as by applying remote technology and robotics.
It is also focusing on improving patient experience, a comparatively new topic in China.
“It’s not just you see a doctor, you spend two minutes, then you go out again. It makes a difference for the quality of care, and how the patient feels as they go through the treatment.”
The last, and maybe the biggest and the most fundamental new trend for the health-care business is digitalization. Health-care is becoming digital in many ways, she said.
“SHANGHAI’S air quality is much better than it was eight years ago when I first came here,” said Paul Lindblad, president of Wacker Chemicals (China) and a Magnolia Gold Award winner honored by the Shanghai government.
Lindblad has reason to praise the city’s cleaner air. The annual average level of PM2.5 in the air has fallen to 32μg per cubic meter this year, down 36 percent from 2015, according to the Shanghai Bureau of Ecology and Environment. Moreover, 318 days in 2020 had excellent or good air quality, almost 12 percent more than in 2015.
PM2.5 consists of fine particles in the air that are the most harmful form of air pollution, because of their ability to penetrate deep inside the body to cause severe illnesses.
China has set limits for PM2.5 in the air. The yearly average should be less than 35μg per cubic meter with a daily average of 75μg per cubic meter. For developed countries in Europe and North America, the limits are much stricter. As such, the country still has a long way to meet environmental targets put forward by President Xi Jinping.
“The Shanghai government is committed to constantly improving the environment,” said Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng. “No household waste will be buried this year.”
Lindblad said his confidence in China has increased in light of how the government has controlled COVID-19.
“Thanks to effective measures taken by the Chinese government, business activities here are quickly recovering,” he said. “Our sales in China began to pick up in the second quarter, and the company’s full-year performance is satisfactory.”
Compared with industries still struggling to get on track, industries that produce materials, like the chemical industry, have recovered faster due to China’s huge consumption capacity.
“Last year, we opened a new competence center in Shanghai to develop silicone-based thermal interface materials that support the rapidly growing e-mobility market, and to enhance our research and development capabilities in China to gain a competitive edge,” Lindblad said. “China is the biggest electric vehicle market and growing fast, which is one of our key growth drivers in the country. In fact, China is not only a growth engine for Wacker, but also for the entire world economy.”
He pointed to the recently announced EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, expected to benefit a level playing field and sustainable development.
“It will make China an even more attractive market,” Lindblad said.
China is the biggest electric vehicle market and growing fast, which is one of our key growth drivers in the country.
Paul Lindblad
President of Wacker Chemicals (China)