Crucial time lost due to slow govt response
BEIJING: It has become increasingly clear from new information available and new stories appearing in Chinese local and social media that China lost crucial days and weeks in early January in containing the pathogen.
A month later, it has gone on to trigger an international public health emergency.
The question is whether the delay was caused by apathy or by a deliberate decision to keep the spreading outbreak a secret.
It was possibly a mix of reasons that stopped authorities from immediately pressing the alarm bell: Local authorities didn’t realise how serious the situation was about to become or they were reluctant to admit to themselves – even after local doctors alerted them – how serious the situation was about to become.
The first cluster of cases of the previously unknown virus appeared in December in Wuhan.
Local experts were immediately alerted because of its new and virulent nature; it was also clear to the first doctors who treated the patients with the mysterious, new pneumonia that it was infectious as members of the same family were falling ill.
It took just a day to two for the information about the disease to reach the top of the local government hierarchy: By January 1, the seafood market to which most initial cases were linked was shut down.
But it took nearly a month for Zhou Xianwang, Wuhan’s mayor, to say that the speed with which information was shared with the public was “not good enough” and blame the information system as he wasn’t authorised to disclose the information.
We will never know who was actually authorised to disclose the information to the 11 million residents of Wuhan.