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“The Chinese authorities have launched an investigation into the spread of viral pneumonia in central China.” The greatest global health emergency in the last hundred years begins like this, on December 31, 2019, with the launches of the main international press agencies (Reuters, Associated Pbeefs, French Media Agency) who writes about 27 people with pneumonia “of unknown origin” in Wuhan: seven of them, according to the local health authority, are hospitalized in “critical conditions”. “Most of them work in the city’s fish market” – the agency’s launches continue – that is why an investigation was launched and, he explains Reuters, the reorganization of the “Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market”.
The nightmare Sars
At first, most Chinese suspected the return of SARS, the severe acute respiratory syndrome that began with the Asian giant, killing 774 people and infecting 8,096 between 2002 and 2003 in 17 countries. The rumor is leaking so quickly online, without any evidence, that the Wuhan police have punished the first people for posting false information online. “The cause of the spread is not clear,” meanwhile local officials specify in the People’s diary. “It’s more likely to be another type of severe pneumonia.” (here the news is about for the first time since Messenger Service)
Lab tests
“The first laboratory tests did not find any apparent transmission from person to person and none of the members of the medical staff who treated the infected were infected,” explains the Chinese health authority. “Investigations into the causes of the infection are ongoing.” In those same hours, as he reconstructed a year later in a long article, New York Times – Experts from the National Health Commission were dispatched to Wuhan for more information, while local authorities urged citizens to “not panic.”
The notice to WHO
That same day, December 31, 2019, China warns the World Health Organization that it publishes the official announcement on January 5. “The clinical symptoms of hospitalized people are mainly fever, some patients have difficulty breathing, and chest X-rays show obvious lesions in both lungs,” the note explains. And basically, “WHO does not recommend the application of any restrictions on travel or trade with China on the basis of the information currently available on this subject.”
The red zone of Vo ‘Euganeo (Padua), on February 22, 2020
L’escalation
On January 11, 2020, a 61-year-old Chinese is the first confirmed victim of what would become a global pandemic. Preliminary tests indicate a “new type of coronavirus.” On January 13, a Chinese woman is quarantined in Thailand and becomes the first positive case outside the country. A week later, one of the top experts from the China Public Health Commission, Zhong Nanshan, confirms that the mysterious virus is transmissible from person to person. On January 21, exactly as during Sars, at the Rome Fiumicino airport thermocans reappear to measure the temperature of travelers arriving from Wuhan.
Coronavirus in Europe
On January 22, at the emergency meeting, the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, maintains that “the new coronavirus does not yet represent an international emergency.” On January 23, China decides the closure for millions of people living in Wuhan and Hubei province. On January 24, 48 hours after the WHO meeting, the first case was registered in Europe (France). On February 21, Italy also has his patient a positive and without having set foot in China. On February 22, the Conte government decreed the “red zone” for ten municipalities in the Lodi and Vo ‘Euganeo (Padua) area. And the rest is known history.
A concert in Wuhan, December 30, 2020 (Epa photo)
The (past) accusations against China
The World Health Organization itself – the agencies recalled on December 31 a year ago – had criticized China for providing fewer subjects with Sars in the early stages in 2003. “That virus, according to the WHO, originated in the province of Guangdong “. Later, Beijing ousted then-Health Minister Zhang Wenkang for unsatisfactory handling of the health crisis even months after the emergency began. Only in May 2004, eighteen months after the first cases, the WHO declared China free of SARS. Today, a year after the launch of the first agency, life in China has almost returned to normal, but not in the rest of the world, which has around 83 million infected people and more than 1.8 million deaths.
December 31, 2020 (change December 31, 2020 | 14:27)
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