WHO experts visit 2nd Wuhan hospital as virus probe proceeds
Members of a World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic visited another Wuhan hospital that had treated early Covid-19 patients on their second day of work on Saturday.
Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital was one of the first in the Chinese city to deal with patients in early 2020 suffering from a then unknown virus and is a key part of the epidemiological history of the disease.
“Just back from visit at Jinyintan hospital, that specialised in infectious diseases and was designated for treatment of the first cases in Wuhan,” Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans tweeted. “Stories quite similar to what I have heard from our ICU doctors.”
Zoologist Peter Daszak of the US group EcoHealth Alliance, who is a member of the team, said in a tweet that the visit was an “important opportunity to talk directly” with medics who were fighting the virus at the critical time.
The team’s first face-to-face meetings with Chinese scientists took place on Friday, before the experts who specialise in animal health, virology, food safety and epidemiology visited another early site of the outbreak, the Hubei Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine Hospital.
The Geneva-based WHO said late on Thursday on Twitter that its team plans to visit hospitals, markets like the Huanan Seafood Market that was linked to many of the first cases, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and laboratories at facilities including the Wuhan Center for Disease Control.
WHO chief warns against ‘vaccine nationalism’
The European Union on Friday backtracked on a threat to restrict exports of coronavirus shots to Northern Ireland in its growing row with Britain, as the WHO warned against “vaccine nationalism”.
British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca has said it can only deliver a fraction of its vaccine doses promised to the EU and Britain because of production problems, but both sides are demanding their pledges are met.
The EU threatened to restrict vaccine exports to Northern Ireland
by overriding part of the Brexit deal with Britain that allowed the free flow of goods over the Irish border, but backed down after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson voiced “grave concerns”. The European Commission will “ensure that the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol is unaffected”, the EU commissioner said in a statement late on Friday.
The supply issue is a huge blow to Europe’s already stumbling vaccine rollout.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom warned on Friday against “vaccine nationalism”, saying there was a “real danger that the very tools that could help to end the pandemic - vaccines - may exacerbate” global inequality. Parts of Africa and Asia have only just started securing and rolling out vaccinations.