Experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) are set to start face-to-face meetings with their Chinese counterparts in the central city of Wuhan, at the start of the team’s long-awaited fact-finding mission at the core of the coronavirus.
Their first in-person meetings should be followed by the first field visits in and around the industrial and transport hub, WHO said on Twitter but did not give further details about the team’s agenda. It said the team had already requested “detailed underlying data” and planned to speak with early responders and some of the first Covid-19 patients.
It said the team requested “detailed underlying data” and planned to speak with early responders and some of the first COVID-19 patients, but didn’t give further details on the team’s agenda. Earlier, WHO tweeted that its team plans to visit hospitals, markets like the Huanan Seafood Market linked to many of the first cases, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and laboratories at facilities like the Wuhan Center for Disease Control.
“All the hypothesis are on the table as the team follows science in its work to understand the origin of the Covid-19 virus. As members begin their field visits, they should get the support, access and data they need,” the WHO tweeted.
The team members had spent the past two weeks in an essential quarantine, during which they were communicating with Chinese authorities by videoconference to lay the foundation for field visits. At his new hotel, some were seen waving from the balcony, and people entering the hotel wore badges identifying them as other disease and health experts.
The mission has become politically charged, as China seeks to avoid blame for alleged missteps in its early response to the outbreak. One possibility is that a wildlife poacher might have passed the virus to traders who carried it to Wuhan. The Chinese government has promoted theories, with little evidence, that the outbreak might have started with imports of frozen seafood tainted with the virus, a notion roundly rejected by international scientists and agencies.
The first clusters of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan in late 2019. China has since reported more than 89,000 cases and 4,600 deaths, with new cases largely concentrated in its frigid northeast and local lockdowns and travel restrictions being imposed to contain the outbreaks.
New cases of local transmission continue to fall with just 36 announced, as far fewer Chinese than usual appear willing to travel for Lunar New Year.
