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An “investigative work” conducted by an official newspaper of the Communist Party of China and published this week indicated that the virus may have reached Wuhan through imported frozen products.
“Although it may be too early to jump to conclusions, the possibility that the coronavirus has passed from frozen goods to Wuhan … cannot be ruled out,” reads a note from the Global Times editor.
After conducting a “series of investigations”, the reporters found, for example, that “consumption and sales of imported frozen products were frequent in Wuhan”, a reality in several other parts of the world.
“Did the initial outbreak in Wuhan originate from imported frozen food?” The newspaper.
Faced with criticism about how Chinese authorities dealt with the early stages of the virus, Beijing is now trying to rewrite the narrative of the pandemic, promoting theories that the virus originated across borders.
While seeking to push forward these theories, the state press has distorted comments from foreign experts to suggest a broad global consensus that the virus first appeared outside of China.
The statements of the director of the Institute for Biosafety Research in Halle, Germany, Alexander Kekulé, have been cited out of context by the official press in recent days to suggest that the virus originated in Italy, one of the countries most affected by the pandemic. .
Kekulé, who has repeatedly said that he believes the virus appeared in China, was shocked. “This is pure propaganda,” he defended.
World Health Organization emergency director Michael Ryan recently spoke of the need for rigorous research into how the virus has moved from animals to humans.
“We have to start [a investigação] where the first cases were detected, in Wuhan, China, “said Ryan, at a press conference.
In China, the government made the expert’s observations and local press falsely claimed that Ryan said the virus existed worldwide, but was discovered in Wuhan.
Several pieces of evidence suggest that the virus originated in an animal, probably a bat, before evolving and infecting humans. In 2003, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), another coronavirus similar to covid-19, emerged in the Guangdong province of southeast China, due to the consumption of civet, a wild animal.
The authorities then promised to ban the trade in wild animals, but the sale of live animals, sold in small cages, displayed in markets, very close to each other, continued to be frequent in some parts of the country, namely in the Huanan market. , in Wuhan, where the first covid-19 outbreak was detected.
In February, the National People’s Congress, the country’s highest legislative body, banned the trade and consumption of wild animal food.
But the theory that the disease came to China through food imports, a hypothesis ruled out by the World Health Organization, has also been supported by Chinese experts.
Quoted by the Global Times, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, recalled that the Huanan market sold frozen seafood.
“This gives us a new perspective, a new way of thinking,” he summarized.
In China, the press is controlled by the Communist Party, a single power party, while the Internet is subject to strict censorship. Chinese academics, experts and intellectuals are pressured to adhere to official interpretations of the regime, sometimes distorting issues of a historical nature.
A year after the new coronavirus was detected in Wuhan, the local population now seems to believe that the disease originated abroad.
“A Chinese coworker asked me if I thought the virus had started in Wuhan, I said yes,” a foreigner living in the city told Lusa. “The [o colega] He replied that he thought the same, but that he should not share that opinion with the other Chinese, who now think that the virus came from abroad.
