WHO maintains that the coronavirus epidemic in Wuha …

The researchers who integrated the mission of the World Health Organization (WHO) who traveled to China to study the origins of the coronavirus found that the disease outbreak was much larger than that reported in December 2019 in Wuhan.

“The virus was circulating widely in Wuhan in December, which is a new discovery,” Peter Ben Embarek, the mission’s lead investigator, said in an interview. The specialists also succeeded in determining that by the end of 2019, there were already more than a dozen variants of the virus in the Chinese city.

Embarek explained that in collaboration with Chinese specialists, WHO researchers analyzed 174 coronavirus cases in and around Wuhan December 2019. Of these, 100 were confirmed by laboratory tests, he said, and 74 others by the clinical diagnosis of the patient’s symptoms.

The principal investigator of the mission noted that the number of cases at the time could be around 1,000 people. “We know that, among the infected population, about 15% end up with severe cases and the majority are mild cases,” he explained in a dialogue with CNN.

Embarek said the mission – which arrived in China in January and comprised of 17 scientists from the WHO and 17 other local institutions – expanded the type of virus genetic material they examined from the first cases of coronavirus in December. This allowed them to examine partial genetic samples (rather than complete samples) and collect 13 different genetic sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 virus for the first time in December 2019.

“Some of them are from markets and some are unrelated to markets,” Embarek said, referring to the Huanan seafood market, the place identified as the source of the outbreak. coronavirus. Scientists from the international organization have ruled out that the virus came out of a laboratory.

Although they have not yet come to a conclusion, specialists believe that the detection of these 13 sequences could indicate that the virus was already circulating in the country before December 2019.

Embarek claimed that Chinese scientists had provided the WHO mission with analyzes of 92 suspected cases of covid-19 from October and November 2019. These patients had symptoms similar to those of covid.

The team from the international body asked that these 92 be examined in January of this year for whether they contained antibodies. Embarek assured that only 67 people had agreed to be tested and that all were negative, although specialists plan to carry out more tests in the future.

The members of the mission too met the first covid-19 patient recorded in China. Embarek said the 40-year-old Wuhan resident “has no connection to the markets” nor does he have a travel history. “He is an office worker in a private company,” he added.

The WHO team hopes to return to China to continue analyzing the samples, although there is still no date set for the trip.