WUHAN, China (AP) – A World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic has visited a provincial disease control center that had an early hand in controlling the outbreak.
WHO researchers arrived in the provincial capital of Hubei, Wuhan, last month to search for clues and visited hospitals treating many of the earliest patients and a fish market where cases of infection with the then unknown virus surfaced in December 2019.
The team’s visit to the Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control on Monday came amid stringent Chinese controls over access to information about the virus. China has sought to avoid blame for alleged missteps in its early response to the outbreak, while promoting alternative theories that the virus came from elsewhere and may even have been brought to Wuhan from outside the country.
After the visit, a member of the team, Peter Daszak, told reporters that it was a “very good meeting, very important.” No other details were given.
The evidence the team gathers will add to what is expected to be a years-long search for answers. Securing the animal reservoir from an outbreak requires enormous amounts of research, including animal sampling, genetic analysis and epidemiological studies.
China has largely curbed domestic transmission through rigorous testing and contact tracking. The wearing of masks in public is almost universally observed, and lockdowns are routinely imposed on communities and even entire cities where cases are detected. The latest outbreaks mainly occurred in the frigid Northeast, with 33 new cases reported nationwide in three provinces on Monday.
Despite this, China registered more than 2,000 new domestic cases of COVID-19 in January, the highest monthly total since the final phase of the initial outbreak in Wuhan last March. Two people died of the disease in January, the first reported COVID deaths in China in several months.
Schools have gone online and travel has been drastically reduced during this month’s Lunar New Year holiday, with the government encouraging people to stay during the main time for family gatherings in the vast country.