In Hunt for Covid-19 Origin, Patient Zero indicates Wuhan’s second market

This case and more recent evidence led a WHO team that investigated the origins of the pandemic to conclude that the virus could have first jumped from an animal to a human earlier and elsewhere and spread to Wuhan by the time the emergence of an outbreak in Huanan Square. occurred.

Patient Zero met with WHO investigators during their recent four-week visit to Wuhan and told them that his parents had visited another local community food market, according to three team members.

The disclosure came at the end of the man’s meeting with WHO investigators and they were unable to identify the market or obtain additional details, team members said. They declined to comment.

Investigators’ interest in the parents of the zero patient was first reported by CNN in an interview with Peter Daszak, a member of the WHO team, who said the parents gave negative results, but Chinese authorities should continue to monitor their contacts. on market. He did not respond to requests for comment.

It was not possible to determine when the parents were tested and whether they had PCR tests, which detect the current but not past infection, or antibody screenings, which can reveal the infection in the past but may fade to undetectable levels over time. Both types of tests were reportedly unavailable in early December 2019 because the virus had not yet been identified.

WHO team members want to identify the market to find out if wildlife has been sold there and to determine whether any of the 174 confirmed cases from December 2019 or potential earlier cases were related to it.

The team and its Chinese counterparts have already established that some of the 174 had links to markets other than Huanan, although they did not name these places.

Wuhan, with a population of 11 million, has about 400 food markets, according to local authorities. Residents say several of them sold wild animals in the form of meat or traditional medicines, and sellers say the goods were often traded between Huanan and other markets.

The lack of details about the first known case in a pandemic that has now killed more than two million people shows the extent of work that still needs to be done to reconcile the December Huanan market outbreak with other data showing people infected with other viruses. parts of Wuhan at the same time and may have begun to spread in November or October 2019.

“We need more studies on early cases,” Peter Ben Embarek, head of the WHO team, told the newspaper. “This is in our recommendations for new work”

China’s Foreign Ministry and the National Health Commission did not respond to requests for comment.

The episode “highlights the need for the WHO team to continue its investigation segment in China,” said Yanzhong Huang, senior global health senior at the New York Foreign Relations Council. “Given the complexity and importance of their work, one month is not enough to draw conclusive results.”

The WHO is set to publish a summary report on the Wuhan mission in the coming days, which is expected to include a number of recommendations for studies on the origins of the pandemic. The report will call for further examination of older cases and potential cases – including the zero-treated patient and his relatives, according to WHO team members.

A full report on the trip is expected weeks later, they say.

Meanwhile, the international controversy over the origins of the pandemic has rekindled, the US has expressed concern about the lack of transparency after The Wall Street Journal reported that China did not share raw data on confirmed or potential early cases.

Beijing responded by accusing Washington of undermining the WHO and reiterated its claim that the virus could have originated in another country and spread to Wuhan through imported frozen foods.

However, Liang Wannian, head of a Covid-19 expert group for China’s National Health Commission, acknowledged during a news conference at the end of the WHO mission that some of the first 174 confirmed cases “were associated with other markets” in Wuhan. .

Chinese authorities initially believed that Huanan Market was the source of the outbreak, as many of the first cases identified visited or operated there, because there were stalls selling the kind of wild animals that spread coronaviruses in the past, and because environmental samples were taken there. were positive. for SARS-CoV-2.

WHO scientists and other experts have long believed that the new coronavirus most likely came from a bat and spread to humans through another animal, probably on a farm or in a market.

WHO investigators say they confirmed during their visit that there are at least two types of animals that can carry the new coronavirus to the Huanan market, ferrets and rabbits, showing a possible way for the pandemic to begin.

They say they have not yet determined what other animals were sold, legally or illegally, but supply chains for the stalls in question lead back to parts of southern China, where SARS-CoV-2’s closest known relatives were found in bats.

At the same time, there are indications that the virus was already spreading widely in the city within days of the first known cases on the market, suggesting that the outbreak could have started elsewhere and spread to the Huanan market.

“There is clear evidence of simultaneous transmission of the virus to other places outside the market,” Thea Fischer, a Danish epidemiologist on the WHO team, told Wuhan reporters. “It seems that the market is less likely to be the source of the virus epidemic.”

Dr. Ben Embarek told CNN in an interview this month that Patient Zero was a 40-year-old office worker in a private company and had no recent travel history. “He has a very boring and normal life in a way – he doesn’t have hiking in the mountains,” said Dr. Ben Embarek.

Dr. Daszak said the man’s main hobby was surfing the Internet.

Some researchers have shown an elderly man who fell ill on December 1, 2019, as a possible infection before patient zero, but a doctor who treated him said he had other chronic illnesses and could not speak, as well as the exact date of symptoms. the onset was unclear because it was estimated by relatives.

Write to Jeremy Page at [email protected], Drew Hinshaw at [email protected] and Betsy McKay at [email protected]