WUHAN, China, Jan 30, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – The team of World Health
Organization experts investigating the origins of the coronavirus met staff
Saturday at the Wuhan hospital which received the first confirmed Covid-19
cases, on day two of fieldwork on their highly scrutinised visit to China.
The group was driven to the Jinyintan Hospital, the first hospital to
receive officially-diagnosed Covid-19 patients in late 2019, as the horrors
of the virus emerged in the central Chinese city.
Details of the trip have been scant so far, with the media kept at arm’s
length and information on the itinerary dribbling out via tweets from the WHO
experts instead of China’s communist authorities.
In a tweet, team member Peter Daszak welcomed the hospital visit as an
“Important opportunity to talk directly w/ medics who were on the ground at
that critical time fighting COVID!”
The mission comes with heavy political baggage.
It has been beset by delays, with China refusing access until mid-January,
while there are question marks over what the experts can hope to find a year
after the virus first emerged.
On Friday, the WHO’s emergencies director Micheal Ryan sought to manage
expectations.
Success “is not measured necessarily in absolutely finding a source on the
first mission”, he told a news conference in Geneva.
“This is a complicated business, but what we need to do is gather all of
the data… and come to an assessment as to how much more we know about the
origins of the disease and what further studies may be needed to elucidate
that.”
Last week China warned the United States against “political interference”
during the trip, after the White House demanded a “robust and clear”
investigation.
The WHO insists the probe will stick tightly to the science behind how the
virus jumped from animals — believed to be bats — to humans.
The team is expected to visit the Huanan market believed to have been the
first major cluster of infections, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other
labs, in what the WHO’s Ryan described as a “very busy, busy schedule”.
Beijing is desperate to defang criticism of its handling of the chaotic
early stages of the outbreak.
It has refocused attention at home — and abroad — on its handling of and
recovery from the outbreak.
Since seeping beyond China’s borders, the pandemic has ripped across the
world killing more than two million people and wrecking economies.
China, with a relatively low reported death toll of 4,636, has bounced
back. It has swiftly locked down areas where any cases are found, tested
millions and restricted travel to snuff out the crisis.
The Chinese economy grew by 2.3 percent despite the outbreak last year and
its leadership misses few chances to boast of the country’s resilience and
renewal.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman on Friday flagged the WHO visit as “a
part of global research” into the pandemic.
“It is not an investigation,” Zhao Lijian told reporters.