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When almost a year has passed since the first case of a mysterious viral pneumonia was identified in Wuhan in December last year, China is trying to step up a campaign that questions the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Chinese state media is reportedly stepping up the news that the novel coronavirus has been discovered in imported frozen foodsand investigate possible cases of the disease found outside of China before December 2019.
On Facebook, the People’s Daily quoted a former epidemiologist who assures that “all the evidence that exists indicates that the coronavirus did not appear in Wuhan. Wuhan was where the virus was first detected, but not its origin”.
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Minister also said, when asked about the possibility that the virus has emerged outside of China, that it is important to distinguish where Covid-19 was first detected. from the moment you crossed the animal barrier to humans.
“Although China was the first country to report cases, that does not mean that the virus originated in China. The investigation of the origin is a continuous process and involves several countries and regions ”, concluded the spokesperson.
However, Chinese scientists have submitted a study for publication in the scientific journal Lancet, which states that Wuhan was not the first place where human-to-human contagion occurred. suggesting that this will have happened in the Indian subcontinent.
The Western world rejects Chinese claims
Claims that are dismissed by scientists from the Western world. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergency program, said last week that It would be “speculated” to say that the infection did not originate in China..
“It is clear, from a public health perspective, that investigations start where the first human cases emerged,” he told a news conference in Geneva.
Reports that Covid-19 was already circulating in Italy in fall 2019, based on samples from a cancer treatment foundation, they are weak”, considered the British virologist Jonathan Stoye, quoted by The Guardian.
“The serological data from Italy can be explained by antibodies related to other types of coronavirus“That is, these antibodies would have been detected in people in Italy who had been infected with different coronaviruses, and not in the person responsible for Covid-19.
Coronavirus in frozen food. What is the risk?
Although residues of the new coronavirus have been detected in frozen foods, the Scientists believe that it presents an extremely low risk of contagion., since today it is known that transmission occurs mainly through respiratory droplets.
A positive for the new coronavirus “It does not indicate that the virus is infectious, but only that it was present on that surface”Andrew Pekosz of Johns Hopkins University explained to the Associated Press.
“I have not seen any convincing evidence that Sars-CoV-2 in food packages poses a significant risk of infection,” he said.
WHO wants to return to China to continue research
Researchers from the World Health Organization who visited Wuhan earlier this year were unable to go to the seafood market related to the initial outbreak. A new team is expected to head to China soon, in order to carry out research on the origin of Covid-19.
