The World Deserves Answers From China
The terrible ravages of the coronavirus pandemic are evident in every corner of the world, so it should seem self-evident that every effort must be made to find out where and when the virus made its fateful leap from animal to human. That is why a team from the World Health Organization last week arrived in Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus was first identified. Just getting into China has taken the W.H.O.’s international team of scientists more than a year.
Without cooperation and transparency in China, W.H.O. can learn a little. The sprawling Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, which peddled game meat and live animals and to which many of the first infections were traced, has been closed and disinfected. The samples and information gathered there are locked away at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and no researchers will dare speak with the international team without explicit permission from the government.
Whether that first germ came from a bat or a pangolin or a civet or a neighboring country is likely to remain a mystery, and the search for ways to stop such transmission will remain handicapped.
Source: NYT #Jan20
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/opinion/china-covid-who.html#click=https://t.co/4tWik7R5kQ
#Covid19 #China #WHO #CovidInvestigationInChina
The terrible ravages of the coronavirus pandemic are evident in every corner of the world, so it should seem self-evident that every effort must be made to find out where and when the virus made its fateful leap from animal to human. That is why a team from the World Health Organization last week arrived in Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus was first identified. Just getting into China has taken the W.H.O.’s international team of scientists more than a year.
Without cooperation and transparency in China, W.H.O. can learn a little. The sprawling Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, which peddled game meat and live animals and to which many of the first infections were traced, has been closed and disinfected. The samples and information gathered there are locked away at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and no researchers will dare speak with the international team without explicit permission from the government.
Whether that first germ came from a bat or a pangolin or a civet or a neighboring country is likely to remain a mystery, and the search for ways to stop such transmission will remain handicapped.
Source: NYT #Jan20
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/opinion/china-covid-who.html#click=https://t.co/4tWik7R5kQ
#Covid19 #China #WHO #CovidInvestigationInChina
NY Times
Opinion | The World Deserves Answers From China
Hampering the work of the W.H.O. puts lives at risk.