More than a year after a new coronavirus first appeared in China, a team of World Health Organization experts finally arrived in central Wuhan City on Thursday to search for the source.
The investigation by the team of ten scientists is a critical step in understanding how the virus jumped from animals to humans so that another pandemic can be avoided. It’s probably hard to get answers.
The Chinese government, which is notorious for its outside investigation, has repeatedly hampered the arrival of the team – and the investigation. Even in the best of circumstances, a complete examination can take months, if not longer. The team must also navigate through China’s efforts to politicize the investigation.
Here’s what you need to know about the investigation.
China has set up barriers and is campaigning for control.
Delayed visas. Quarantine rules. Political stonewalling.
Chinese officials seem to be concerned about the renewed attention of the country’s early mistakes in dealing with the pandemic, and have used various tactics in recent years to thwart the WHO investigation.
After China resisted the demands of other countries to allow independent investigators on the ground to study the origin of the pathogen, China finally had two WHO experts visit in July to lay the groundwork. Thereafter, it immediately placed the team in quarantine for 14 days, forcing the members to do some of their detective work at a distance.
They are not allowed to visit Wuhan where the virus first originated.
For months, China has approved a visit by a full team of experts, which has frustrated the leaders of the health agency. When the visit was completed earlier this month, it fell apart at the last minute when Beijing, according to the health agency, could not provide visas for visitors. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, issued a rare reprimand over Beijing at a news conference, saying he was “very disappointed” by the delays.
The Chinese government has demanded that Chinese scientists oversee important parts of the investigation. This has limited the global health agency’s access to important research and data. The entire WHO team will be quarantined in Wuhan for two weeks before it can start to struggle.
Critics say Beijing’s desire for control means the investigation is likely to be more political than scientific.
“You want this investigation to be thorough, and not subject to politicization, independent and transparent,” said Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Foreign Relations Council. “But we have to be realistic.”
Despite the problems, the WHO says it intends to conduct a thorough and transparent study.
“WHO has been committed from the outset to investigating the origin of the virus,” the agency’s spokesman Tarik Jašarević said in a statement. “We call on all countries to support these efforts by showing openness and transparency.”
Detecting the virus will be a painstaking task.
According to the official broadcaster CGTN, the team that arrived in Wuhan will face a city that was radically changed when the virus first appeared, at the end of 2019. The city that on January 23 last years locked up and became a symbol of the virus, devastation was presented a year later by Chinese officials as a success story to overcome the virus – a city reborn.
The WHO experts have decades of experience in the depth of viruses, animal health and disease control. They come from Britain, Germany, Japan, Russia, the United States and other countries. Peter Daszak, a British disease ecologist, and Hung Nguyen, a Vietnamese scientist studying zoonotic diseases, are among the team members.
But the detection of the source of the virus that killed nearly two million people worldwide and infected more than 92 million as of Thursday will be careful. Although experts believe that the virus originates naturally in animals, possibly bats, little is known.
The team is expected to investigate the earliest cases of the virus in China, and likely to investigate data from samples collected at a vast wet market in Wuhan that sold venison and live animals. Many of the first reported infections were detected there.
How much access the team gets in China is critical, according to public health experts.
They should be able to review all the data collected by China’s Disease Control Center on the outbreak, “including detecting contact, sampling the environment, genetic sequences and identifying the patient’s zero,” he said. Raina MacIntyre, head of the biosecurity program at the Kirby Institute, said from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. “It’s important to do it completely and transparently.”
The health agency did not say how long the investigation would take, nor did it release a detailed itinerary for the team’s visit.
Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist in the WTO team, said the investigation was a ‘long-term project’.
“We will gather all the scientific information gathered by our colleagues in China and discuss: ‘What does this tell us?'” She said in a recent interview with CGTN, the Chinese international broadcaster. ‘Is there any information we would like to add? How can it be done? ”
The team will have to step aside efforts to politicize its investigation.
The pandemic has damaged China’s reputation, with many foreign governments still angry because Beijing did no more to curb the crisis in its earliest stages. Chinese propagandists are therefore trying to use the WHO investigation to support the image of China and to portray the country as a mature superpower.
“China is open, frank and sincere,” Xinhua, the official news agency, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The WHO itself has also been attacked by the Trump administration for apparently bowing to China’s will, even though the United States has come under criticism for its ineffective response to the pandemic. Before the team landed, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Twitter Tuesday: “The @WHO is corrupt by China’s influence and bought cheap. WHO investigators still do not have access to Wuhan – a year after the first cases were reported? ‘
On the same day, Global Times, a state-run pony newspaper, writes that the pending visit shows that China ‘has always been committed to contributing to the global fight against the pandemic with a transparent, responsible attitude and a spirit of respect for science. ”
The Chinese government has tried to express unfounded theories that the virus originated outside China. Chinese scientists, without evidence, suggested that packaged food from overseas may have brought the virus to China or that the pandemic could have started in India.
The harsh political climate will make it difficult for the WHO to conduct an independent investigation, experts say.
“The biggest concern here is the origin of the outbreak has been so politicized,” he said. Huang, the global health expert, said. “This has reduced the scope for the WHO to conduct an independent, objective and scientific inquiry.”
Albee Zhang and Claire Fu contributed research.