WUHAN, China (AP) – Members of a team from the World Health Organization investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic visited another Wuhan hospital that treated COVID-19 patients on their second full working day on Saturday.
Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital was one of the first in the Chinese city to deal with patients suffering from a then unknown virus in early 2020, and is an important part of the epidemiological history of the disease.
“Just back to the visit to Jinyintan Hospital, which specializes in infectious diseases and which has been designated for the treatment of the first cases in Wuhan,” Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans said in a post on Twitter. “Stories similar to what I heard from our ICU doctors.”
Zoologist Peter Daszak of the US group EcoHealth Alliance, who is a member of the team, said in a tweet that the visit was an “important opportunity to talk directly” with medics fighting the virus at a critical time. .
The first meetings with Chinese team scientists took place on Friday before experts specializing in animal health, virology, food safety and epidemiology visited another early site of the outbreak, the Hubei Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine Hospital.
The WHO in Geneva said late on Thursday on Twitter that its team plans to visit hospitals, markets such as the Huanan seafood market, which has been linked to many of the first cases, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and laboratories at facilities, including the Wuhan Center for Disease Control.
“All hypotheses are on the table as the team follows science in their work to understand the origin of the COVID19 virus,” WHO tweeted. It is said that the team has already requested ‘detailed underlying data’ and plans to talk to early responders and some of the first patients.
The mission has been politically charged, as China wants to avoid blaming alleged missteps in its early response to the outbreak.
It is likely that a single visit by scientists will confirm the origin of the virus. Capturing the animal reservoir of an outbreak is usually a comprehensive endeavor that requires years of research, including taking animal samples, genetic analysis, and epidemiological studies.
One possibility is that a poacher would have transmitted the virus to traders who transported it to Wuhan. The Chinese government has advanced with little evidence theories that the outbreak may have started with the importation of frozen seafood contaminated with the virus, an idea that has been completely rejected by international scientists and agencies.
A possible focus for researchers is the Wuhan Institute of Virology. One of China’s leading viral research laboratories has built up an archive of genetic information on bat coronavirus after the outbreak of SARS in 2003, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.
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The story has been updated to correct the spelling of Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital.
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Soo reported from Hong Kong. Associated Press video journalist Sam McNeil in Beijing contributed to this report.