A team of researchers from the World Health Organization in China investigating the origin of the coronavirus tells CNN that they now have months of Chinese flu data that could provide vital clues to the virus’s early spread.
On Sunday, the team visited the wet market thought to be central to the spread of the disease: the now disinfected and closed Huanan fish market in Wuhan city, where a first cluster of pneumonia-like illnesses was launched by doctors in mid-December 2019. noticed. The market has become the anecdotal “ground-zero” for Covid-19, though later studies have suggested it started elsewhere.
Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO team leader and a food safety specialist, told CNN that “even if the place had been sanitized to some degree, all the shops are there – and the equipment is there. It gives you a good idea of the way. state of the market in terms of maintenance, infrastructure, hygiene and flow of goods and people. ”The team was able to talk to the local population and workers, said Ben Embarek. He warned it was too early in their research to draw any conclusions.
“It’s clear something has happened in that market,” said Ben Embarek. “But it could also be that other places played the same role, and it was just picked because some doctors were smart enough to link a few sporadic cases together.”
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