One of China’s top scientists defended the country’s delays in triggering a global alarm in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, saying officials were initially unsure if the pathogen was infectious among humans because close contacts of the first patients did not appear. to get sick.
In the early days of 2020, after the mysterious group of pneumonia appeared in the center of Wuhan in China, Chinese experts quarantined 700 close contacts of the first patients – including 400 medical workers who cared for them – but none showed no signs of disease.
This led experts to drop the conclusion that the coronavirus is transmissible to humans, said Liang Wannian, a senior National Health Commission official who monitored China’s response to the virus until September.
“In early January, none of the two dozen cases – and subsequently increased to forty – did not meet these criteria,” Liang said in an exclusive interview with Bloomberg News in Beijing on Tuesday. “Our call at the time was that there was no clear evidence for human-to-human transmission.”
It was not until January 20 that China confirmed that the virus could be transmitted among humans after some medical staff became infected. By then, the situation had spiraled out of control: a few days later, Wuhan and the wider Hubei Province were forced to freeze draconianly, as infections grew and hospitals became overwhelmed.
China has faced heavy criticism for those lost days. The initial reduction in the severity of the pathogen threat allowed Covid-19 to quickly cross borders to become a pandemic that infected more than 86 million people and killed more than 1.8 million.
It is now understood that many patients with Covid-19 are asymptomatic, which could have explained why the first quarantine contacts of the first patients did not appear to be ill.
Liang’s comments are the most detailed public statements to date from senior Chinese officials describing the circumstances leading up to the crisis.
The medical staff arrives with a suspect of patient Covid-19 at the Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan in January 2020.
Photographer: Hector Retamal / AFP / Getty Images
Changing narrative
However, some governments have acted much faster than China. taiwan avoided a major outbreak by imposing border controls and other strict curbs in January.
Taiwanese health officials visited Wuhan early and noticed that some of the first patients had nothing to do with the wet market suspected of being where people became infected. This led them to conclude that human-to-human transmission occurs.
Faced with global acrimony, China has tried to change the narrative on the origins of the virus, with state media and government officials pushing for the possibility of the pathogen not just appearing in the Asian country.
China making it difficult to solve the mystery of where Covid They started
Liang, a public health veteran who also monitored Beijing’s response to the 2003 SARS outbreak, echoed the theory.
He said that although much speculation was focused on wildlife on the market, serving as an intermediate host for the virus which was then transmitted to humans, most of the first patients were merchants selling seafood there.
“Our hypothesis was that they mostly sell animals or meat, but that was not the case,” Liang said. “We need to study where the virus came from in the Huanan Seafood Market: is it from animals or other goods transported by the cold chain or transported by humans? The market is probably not at the beginning of the chain. “
Political divisions
The lack of any definitive solutions to the mystery has fueled the political divisions created by the pandemic, especially between China and the United States. The Trump administration has claimed that the virus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where many coronaviruses have been studied – a scenario that Liang said has “zero percent“The chance to be true.
P4 Laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Photographer: Hector Retamal / AFP / Getty Images
China’s actions have not helped dispel mistrust. Representatives and scientists from the World Health Organization visited Wuhan in January and February, but were denied access to the Wuhan market to conduct investigations.
The difficulties continued, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday that China had delayed the trip of experts sent to the Asian country to investigate the origins of the virus. Chinese officials have not yet finalized permission to allow the WHO team to enter the country, despite months of negotiations and planning.
WHO issues a rare reprimand to China for delaying the journey of virus origins
Liang said during the interview that the WHO investigation will “start very soon” in China. Among the works to be carried out is the analysis of data and samples taken from the Wuhan market in early 2020, before being thoroughly disinfected.
Liang, who left his post at China’s National Health Commission in September and joined the newly established Vanke School of Public Health at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, rejected claims that the country was not prompt enough.
However, he acknowledged that the lack of international exposure among many Chinese doctors in the field of public and clinical health can hinder effective communication.
“We should step up our efforts to cultivate talents and abilities to familiarize them with international rules and allow them to communicate,” and to be better understood, Liang said.
– With the assistance of Tom Mackenzie, Dong Lyu and Claire Che