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JENEWA, KOMPAS.com – A team of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) found a sign that the Covid-19 that first emerged in Wuhan, China, in 2019, was actually much broader than expected.
This was revealed by Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO expert team investigating the origin of Covid-19 in Wuhan. CNN.
Embarek said he was pushing for access to hundreds of thousands of blood samples in Wuhan. However, the Chinese authorities have so far not allowed the request.
Embarek said CNN in an interview that the research effort had found some signs of a further spread of Covid-19 in 2019.
Also read: Covered with frustration, the WHO and US experts ask China for more data
He also mentioned that there were more than a dozen strains of the virus that already existed in Wuhan as of December 2019. 9News, Monday (2/15/2021).
The team also had the opportunity to speak with the first patient who, according to Chinese authorities, was infected with no travel history. He was reportedly infected on December 8, 2019.
The delay in the more detailed data collected by the WHO team could heighten the concerns of other scientists investigating the origins of Covid-19.
The reason is that scientists fear that the disease has spread in China long before its first official appearance in mid-December 2019.
Also read: WHO research team says how experts in China refuse to send important data
“The virus has been circulating widely in Wuhan in December (2019), which is a new finding,” said Embarek. CNN.
He added that Chinese scientists had given the team a record of 174 corona virus cases around Wuhan in December 2019.
Of the 100 cases, they had been confirmed by laboratory tests, while the other 74 cases had been made by clinical diagnosis of the patient’s symptoms.
Embarek said the number of Covid-19 cases may actually be much higher, meaning the disease infected about 1,000 more people in Wuhan in December 2019.
Also read: 5 mysteries of the Corona virus that have not been solved by the WHO team in China
“We haven’t made any models since,” Embarek said.
But, roughly speaking, Embarek mentions that of the infected population, about 15 percent have severe cases. While the rest or most of them are mild cases.
He added that the team also collected 13 different genetic sequences for the SARS-CoV-2 virus for the first time since December 2019.
This sequence, when examined with broader data from patients in China throughout 2019, can provide valuable clues about the geography and timing of the outbreak before December 2019.
“Some of them come from the market (Huanan seafood in Wuhan). Some of them are not related to the market,” Embarek said.
Also read: WHO researcher: US intelligence will have a political burden in the investigation of the origins of Covid-19
