Hamartia Antidote
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China refused to give WHO officials key Covid data for origin of outbreak
Investigators from the World Health Organisation recently concluded a fact-finding trip to Wuhan that failed to ascertain the beginnings of the pandemic
www.mirror.co.uk
Chinese scientists refused to share key data on Covid-19 that might have helped locate the origin of the deadly virus.
Investigators from the World Health Organisation on a fact-finding trip requested raw data on patient records but were rebuffed by officials.
Disagreements became so tense that they sometimes erupted into shouting matches, it has been reported.
For 27 days in January and February, a team of 14 experts for the WHO led a mission to trace the origins of the pandemic - but failed to find any conclusive answers.
Several allege their Chinese counterparts were frustrated by the team’s persistent questioning and demands for data, reports the New York Times.
Officials in China urged the investigators to embrace the government's narrative about the virus - and not believe reports about the Wuhan wet market or that the virus was started in a lab.
Thea Kølsen Fischer, a Danish epidemiologist on the team, said: “It was my take on the entire mission that it was highly geopolitical.
"Everybody knows how much pressure there is on China to be open to an investigation and also how much blame there might be associated with this.”
Frustrated in their efforts, nonetheless the WHO team compromised with their report on Covid-19.
They praised the Chinese government’s transparency, but pushed for more research about the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019.
The team asked for details about the first patients - and possible ones before that.
“We asked for that on a number of occasions and they gave us some of that, but not necessarily enough to do the sorts of analyses you would do,” said Dominic Dwyer, an Australian microbiologist on the WHO team, referring to the confirmed cases.
Chinese scientists acknowledged they had discovered 92 people hospitalized in Wuhan as early as October 2019 with the Covid-like symptoms of a fever and coughing.
The Chinese experts said they had found no trace of Covid-19 in those people, but the tests were incomplete.
The WHO team is expected to release a full report about its findings in coming weeks.
Expect screams and howls of FakeNews in 3...2...1
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