BEIJING – Chinese authorities have refused to provide World Health Organization investigators with raw and personalized data on early cases of Covid-19 that could help them determine how and when the coronavirus began to spread in China, according to WHO investigators who described heated exchanges due to lack of details.
The Chinese authorities have rejected requests to provide this data on 174 cases of Covid-19 that they have identified since the early stages of the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. Investigators are part of a WHO team that this week he completed a month-long mission to China to determine the origins of the pandemic.
Chinese officials and scientists have provided their own summaries and extensive analysis of case data, WHO team members said. They also provided aggregate data and analyzes on retrospective medical searches in the months before the Wuhan outbreak was identified, saying they found no evidence of the virus.
But the WHO team was not allowed to view the raw data behind these retrospective studies, which could allow them to conduct their own analysis of how early and widespread the virus began to spread in China, they said. team members. Member States usually provide such data – anonymized but disaggregated so that investigators can see all other relevant details about each case – as part of WHO investigations, team members said.
“They showed us a few examples, but it’s not the same as doing them all, which is a standard epidemiological investigation,” said Dominic Dwyer, an Australian microbiologist on the WHO team. “So, you know, the interpretation of this data is becoming more limited from our point of view, although the other party might see it as pretty good.”