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During their four-week visit to China, the team was reportedly stumped when China failed to share raw patient data from 174 of its COVID-19 cases, said an Australian infectious disease expert who was part of the team. The OMS.
China refused to hand over critical raw patient data from its first COVID cases, which broke out in the country in December, to the World Health Organization (WHO) team of experts who had come to investigate whether the coronavirus caused the disease originated in Wuhan.
This information has been revealed by one of the members of the WHO team, Dominic Dwyer, an Australian expert on infectious diseases.. He was part of an international team tasked with studying the origins of the COVID pandemic. During their four-week visit to China, the team was reportedly stumped when China failed to share raw patient data from 174 of its COVID-19 cases, Dwyer revealed.
Half of these 174 cases were exposed to the Huanan market, the seafood market in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged and was crucial to the investigation.
These raw data, called “line listings,” contain key details such as the questions that individual patients are asked, their responses, and the analysis of their responses. This should be studied as standard practice in investigating an outbreak, Dwyer said. But, the Chinese shared only a general summary of these cases with the team.
Read also: Did the coronavirus come from Wuhan? Expert team to shed some light soon
Dwyer told the media that he could not comment on why the team did not receive the data. “Whether political, time consuming or difficult… But if there are other reasons why the data is not available, I don’t know. One could only speculate, ”he said, reported Reuters. His statement again raises questions about whether China had really opened its doors for the team to investigate how and why the deadly virus spread so rapidly around the world and killed millions of people.
However, members of the WHO team have previously said that the Chinese authorities had collaborated during the visit. Dwyer also said the country shared far more data than the team had received the previous year. They may have had arguments, but that was natural in such investigations. But this problem of not receiving raw patient data will be mentioned in the team’s final report, which is scheduled to be published next week.
The WHO investigation was always bogged down with politics, as China allegedly was slow to give outside independent agencies access the opportunity to study the causes and impact of the outbreak in China. The team was escorted to venues organized solely by their Chinese hosts.
Neither the WHO nor the Chinese Foreign Ministry have commented on this recent development.
Read also: WHO Expert Team Says Wuhan Connection With COVID Cannot Be Established
Meanwhile, Beijing has tried to divert attention to imported frozen foods as the cause of the virus. This theory was further supported by Peter Ben Embarek, who led the WHO delegation, when he told a press conference that transmission of the virus through frozen food is a possibility. But he also pointed to market vendors selling frozen animal products, including wild farm animals, as a potential avenue that warrants further study.
Scientists have said that pinpointing the animal sources of an outbreak reportedly requires a great deal of research, including taking animal samples, genetic analysis and epidemiological studies.
Beijing agreed to the long-awaited international investigation after many months of negotiations with the WHO.
