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Ben Embarek told CNN that Chinese scientists presented to the mission 174 cases of coronavirus registered in and around Wuhan and which were reported in December 2019, of which 100 were confirmed through the laboratory and the rest by clinical diagnosis of the patient.
He added that this increased number of cases, probably serious cases, discovered by Chinese doctors early on., could mean that the disease affected more than 1,000 people in Wuhan in that December.
“The virus was widely circulating in Wuhan in December, which is a new finding,” said Embarek, who returned to Switzerland after a 4-week mission to the Asian country to investigate the origin of the virus.
The researcher noted that they discovered that there were more than a dozen strains of the virus in Wuhan as early as December, a signal that reflects a wider spread than previously thought.
Peter Ben Embarek also indicated that they were able to speak with him patient named by Chinese authorities as the first case: an office worker in his 40s, with no travel history, and reported infected on December 8, 2019.
The WHO expert pointed out that after the mission they have managed to collect for the first time 13 different genetic sequences of the SARS-COV-2 virus as of December 2019, which if examined with broader data from patients in China during 2019 could provide clues to the place and time of the outbreak before December.
That genetic material, CNN says, It is probably the first international evidence to support the theory that several variants of the virus have been circulating since before December 2019, as some virologists estimate.
The diffusion of the interview with the director of the mission is given after the The White House demanded that the Chinese government make public its data on the early days of the pandemic, and expressed its “deep concerns” for the way in which the WHO mission released its findings after visiting China.
In a statement, the White House National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, considered it “imperative” that WHO’s investigation into the origin of the virus is “independent” with the findings of the mission in Wuhan and “free from any intervention or alteration by the Chinese government.”
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Chinese government refused to provide the WHO mission with original data on the first cases of COVID-19 in the Asian country and they only provided the reports they had prepared on those infections.
Therefore, the WHO team was unable to review the original data on which these reports were based, something that would allow them to reach their own conclusions about the origin and the way in which the virus spread, according to researchers from the organization cited anonymously by The Wall Street Journal.
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington criticized these comments and pointed out that “WHO is an authorized multilateral international organization in the field of health, not an amusement park where one can come and go at will”, alluding to the process that former US President Donald Trump began to leave the body.
“What the United States has done in recent years is seriously undermine the institutions multilateral organizations, including the WHO, and has seriously damaged international cooperation on COVID-19”He added.
Embarek told CNN that they hope to return to the Chinese province of Wuhan in the coming months. to continue with the investigations, but at the moment there are no specific dates.
