On Sunday, the team visited the wet market that was thought to be central to the spread of the disease: the now disinfected and diaper market Huanan seafood market in the city of Wuhan, where doctors in mid-December 2019 noticed an initial group of pneumonia-like diseases. The market has become the anecdotal ‘ground-zero’ for COVID-19, although later studies suggest it may have started elsewhere.
Peter Ben Embarek, the leader of the WHO team and a food safety specialist, told CNN that “even though the place has been disinfected to some extent, all the shops are there – and the equipment is there. It gives you ‘ a good idea of the state of the market in terms of maintenance, infrastructure, hygiene and flow of goods and people. “The team was able to talk to locals and workers,” said Ben Embarek, warning that it was too early in their investigations. was to draw conclusions.
“It’s clear that something has happened in the market,” said Ben Embarek. “But it could also be that other places had the same role, and that one was chosen only because some doctors were smart enough to link some sporadic cases together.”
Another WHO team member, Professor Thea Fisher, told CNN she was amazed at the “utility” of seeing a market abandoned over the past year. “We had very good public health people with us who undertook the environmental samples on the market. They explained to us exactly where they took the samples from the ventilation system.”
“It’s quite a shock to see place,” said another team member, ecologist and zoologist Peter Daszak. “All the shops are empty, the equipment is still there. It’s a little awful.”
Ben Embarek also revealed that Chinese officials provided the WTO team with important information on flu or flu-like illnesses, given in the months before the outbreak of December 2019 by China’s sophisticated disease surveillance systems in and around the Hubei region.
“We have data for the whole province and also beyond – to look at data from other neighboring provinces and go back a few months … There are many things to look at. It is important to be able to in the preceding months work. [the outbreak] to go down to a much lower level, and try to pick up signals, and see if there is anything we can connect, ‘he said.
Ben Embarek describes the approach of Chinese authorities, previously criticized for the slow admission of the WTO team, as ‘transparent’.
“We see what we are asking to see,” he said, adding that the Chinese authorities were flexible and that he hoped for future journeys to this first 14-day mission.
According to Fisher, the work is sometimes complicated by the size of the group that makes visits to China. “It is my hope with the visits in the coming days that we can go in smaller groups. It is more difficult to build a relationship. [with an interviewee] in a very short time … if you’re 50, sit and listen. “
Nick Paton Walsh reports from London and Sandi Sidhu from Hong Kong.