An Associated Press (AP) investigation found that the Chinese government has frozen significant efforts to trace the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, despite publicly saying it supports an open scientific investigation.
The AP relied on thousands of pages of undisclosed emails and documents, leaked recordings and dozens of interviews that show the freeze began much earlier than previously thought ― as early as first weeks of the epidemic ― and that this was due to political and scientific infighting in China as much as accusations made internationally.
Crucial initial efforts were hampered by bureaucrats in Wuhan who misled the central government, which silenced Chinese scientists and subjected visiting U.N. officials to tours organized by the Organization. World Health Organization itself, which may have compromised early opportunities to gather critical information, according to internal documents obtained by the AP.
The secret from the start
Secrecy surrounds the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. Even when Chinese authorities began researching the origins of the virus is unclear. The first publicly known investigation of the coronavirus took place on December 31, 2019, when scientists from the Chinese Center for Disease Control visited the Wuhan market where many COVID-19 cases surfaced.
But WHO officials learned about an earlier inspection of the market on Dec. 25, 2019, according to a recording of a confidential WHO meeting provided to the AP. In the recording, the WHO’s top virus expert, Peter Ben Embarek, tells colleagues that Chinese officials that day were “looking at what was for sale in the market, whether all sellers had licenses ( and) if there was illegal trade [d’animaux sauvages] “.
Mr Ben Embarek adds that the investigation was “not routine” and that the WHO would “try to understand what happened”. Such an investigation has never been publicly mentioned by Chinese authorities or the WHO.
The WHO assured in an email that it was “not aware” of any investigation on December 25, 2019. Other experts said any market visit that day would be important, particularly if animal samples were being taken because they could provide critical evidence of how COVID-19 jumped to humans.
Punish scientists
Zhang Yongzhen was the first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus. A day after writing a memo urging health authorities to act quickly, China’s top health official ordered his laboratory closed.
“They used their official power against me and our colleagues,” Mr. Zhang wrote in an email forwarded to AP by Edward Holmes, an Australian virologist.
Among Chinese doctors and scientists, the feeling that Beijing was looking for a scapegoat grew. The government has opened investigations into top health officials, according to two former and current employees of China’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) and three other people with knowledge of the matter. According to two of these people, Chinese CDC staff were encouraged to report colleagues who had mishandled the outbreak to the Communist Party’s disciplinary bodies.
As criticism of China intensified, the Chinese government deflected responsibility. Instead of firing health officials, he declared the fight against the virus a success and closed investigations into those responsible, with few job losses.
“There have been no real reforms, because reform means admitting fault,” said a public health expert in contact with senior Chinese health officials, who asked not to be identified because of the nature sensitive to the issue.
Politicians have taken control
Early on, Chinese scientists were silenced and politicians took control.
While the WHO negotiated with China to send a COVID-19 fact-finding mission in early 2020, it was the Chinese Foreign Ministry, not the scientists, who decided the terms. China refused to grant a visa to the WHO’s Ben Embarek, who was the agency’s leading animal virus expert at the time. According to draft agendas obtained by AP, the itinerary removed almost all items related to the search for origins.
The WHO visit was entrusted to Liang Wannian, an epidemiologist close to senior Chinese officials who is widely seen as defending the party line and not science-backed policies, according to nine people familiar with the situation, who declined. to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter. Mr. Liang also ordered that the Wuhan market be disinfected before samples could be taken and promoted an implausible theory that COVID-19 came from frozen food imported into China.
On a train trip with Dr. Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Mr. Liang pressured the U.N. agency to praise the U.N.’s response. China in its public report. The new section was so flattering that his colleagues emailed Mr. Aylward to suggest he “cut it down a bit.”
Toxic atmosphere
When the WHO visited Wuhan again in January 2021, the hunt for origins had become highly politicized. Mr. Liang, the Chinese official in charge of the two previous WHO visits, organized market workers to tell WHO experts that no live wild animals were being sold and removed from the report recent photos of wild animals in the market.
The WHO team concluded that a laboratory leak was “extremely unlikely.” Months later, the WHO chief said it was “premature” to dismiss the lab leak theory and called on China to be more transparent, infuriating Chinese officials .
According to a letter obtained by the AP, China has told the WHO that any future missions to find the origins of COVID-19 should take place elsewhere. Since then, global cooperation has ground to a halt.
According to ten researchers, medical experts and health officials, Chinese scientists are still under great pressure. Researchers who have published papers on the coronavirus have had problems with Chinese authorities. Others have been barred from traveling abroad to attend WHO conferences and meetings.
The director of the China CDC’s Institute of Viral Diseases was forced to retire due to the release of sensitive commercial data, according to a former China CDC official who declined to be named, fearing repercussions.
“It has to do with the origins, so they are still worried,” the official said. If you try to get to the bottom of it, what will happen if it turns out that the product comes from China? »