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 spotted by doctors in mid-December 2019. . The market has become anecdotal ‘ground-zero’ for COVID-19, although subsequent studies have suggested it may have 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.”
Another member of the WHO team, Professor Thea Fisher, told CNN she was surprised by the “usefulness” of seeing a market abandoned in the past year. “We had some very good public health people with us who actually took some of the environmental samples on the market … and explained to us exactly where they took the ventilation system samples.”
“It’s quite a shock to see,” said another team member, ecologist and zoologist Peter Daszak. ‘All shops are empty, the equipment is still there. It’s a bit creepy. ‘
Ben Embarek also revealed that Chinese officials provided the WHO team with important data on influenza, or flu-like illnesses, spotted by China’s advanced disease surveillance systems in and around the Hubei region in the months leading up to the December 2019 outbreak.
“We have data for the entire province and beyond – we look at data from other neighboring provinces and go back a few months … There are many things to look at. [the outbreak] to go to a much lower level and try to pick up signals and see if there is something there that we can link, ”he said.
Ben Embarek described the approach of the Chinese authorities, previously criticized for the slow approval of the WHO team, as “transparent.”
“We see what we are asking,” he said, adding that the Chinese authorities had been flexible and hoped for future journeys after this initial 14-day mission.
But Fisher said the work was complicated at times by the sheer size of the group who made some visits to China. “I hope that with some of the visits in the coming days we can go in smaller groups. It’s harder to build a relationship. [with an interviewee] in a very short time … if you are listening with 50 people. “
Nick Paton Walsh reported from London and Sandi Sidhu from Hong Kong.