Chinese experts assure coronavirus could have circulated elsewhere previously in Wuhan

The head of the Chinese team of experts who investigated the coronavirus in Wuhan assured on Tuesday that he could have circulated to other places previously in the Chinese city, where there is not “enough evidence” he was present before December 2019.

“In the two months leading up to December, there is no evidence he was in the city,” he said. Liang wannian, during the press conference of the World Health Organization (WHO) mission on the results of its investigation into the origin of the virus.

The Chinese expert considered “unlikely” that there has been some transmission of the virus during these two months and asserted that the early circulation of the coronavirus occurred several weeks before the detection of the first cases, which “may explain the failure of its detection in other regions’ outside of China.

“The hypothesis of an accident in a laboratory is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus into humans, ”added Peter Ben Embarek, WHO’s head of mission.

“In reality is not part of the assumptions that we suggest for future studies, ”he added, downplaying a statement by former US President Donald Trump, who accused the Wuhan Institute of Virology of letting the virus escape, consciously or no.

Last April, Trump fueled the theory that the coronavirus accidentally came out of a Chinese lab, a hypothesis that “multiple sources” in the US government have worked with to explain the cause of the virus’s spread.

On the other hand, expert Liang Wannian said that the virus could come from an animal, but for the moment the specific species has not been identified.

“The discovery of viral sequences with strong homology to Sars-Cov-2 suggests that it could be zoonotic origin“, suggested and clarified that, in accordance with these conclusions, it should be excluded that the infection could be from a lab error.

The WHO team arrived in Wuhan on January 14, considered the epicenter of the pandemic, and, after two weeks in quarantine, visited places such as the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where the first known group of infections has occurred. As well as Wuhan. Institute of Virology.

“We came here with two goals: first, to find out what happened at the start of the pandemic. We focused on trying to understand what had happened during this time. At the same time, we also tried to understand how it happened, how the virus appeared, how it jumped. to the human population. Have we radically changed the image we had before? I don’t think so, ”admitted Ben Embarek.

However, he pointed out that “crucial details” to this explanation. “We have not found any evidence of large outbreaks that could be linked before December in Wuhan. We can also agree that we found a wider circulation of the virus in Wuhan in December, not only limited to the Huanan market,” at it detailed.

Thus, the expert explained that the WHO mixes “four hypotheses” about how he jumped on humans. First, the direct jump from an animal to a human; the second, from the bat and through intermediate animal species, with a second animal involved which is “potentially closer to humans in which the virus easily adapts and jumps to humans”.

The third theory, also defended by Wannian, is the possibility that frozen products act as a surface of transmission of the virus to the human population or routes of transmission related to food.

The Chinese expert made this argument to suggest that the virus could be imported into China from other parts of the world, a fact that Embarek has not completely ruled out either.

“Our first results suggest that the intermediate animal sector is most likely and one that will require more specific studies, ”he said, while acknowledging the validity of the fact that the virus could have been transmitted through the cold chain.

Since the virus outbreak in the dense region of China in December, some conspiracy theories have claimed that the germ has spread from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, specifically the P4 lab, which is equipped to handle dangerous viruses. . “It is impossible that this virus comes from us”, they defended themselves.

The broad scientific consensus holds that SARS-CoV-2, the official name for the virus, originated in bats, but the source of the virus remains a mystery.

Source: Agencies