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One year after the official confirmation of the world’s first coronavirus case on December 1, 2019, confidential documents obtained by CNN reveal the chaos in Wuhan, official reports more optimistic than the actual number of cases and a series of errors that seem being contributed to the spread of the pandemic. The documents also speak of an extraordinary increase in the number of flu cases in several cities in Hubei province, including Wuhan.
On December 1, 2019, the first case of coronavirus was registered in Wuhan, China. Chinese authorities have since claimed that they have rigorously monitored the spread of the virus and released data on the pandemic in a transparent manner.
However, 117 pages of leaked documents from the Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, obtained and verified by CNN, reveal that this was not the case.
The documents also show a 20-fold increase in flu cases in a week in early December in Hubei province.
The increase, which took place in the week that began Dec. 2, was about 2,059% compared to the same week last year, according to documents.
The outbreak that week was not the worst in Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, but in nearby cities, Yichang with 6,135 cases and Xianning with 2,148 cases. Wuhan was the third worst hit, with 2,032 new cases that week.
Public data shows a nationwide increase in influenza cases in December 2019. Experts say this increase would have complicated the task of officials searching for dangerous new viruses.
Although the extent of the influenza outbreak in Hubei has not been publicly reported, experts say it is difficult to draw conclusions about the possible prevalence of previously undetected COVID-19 cases.
The documents show that tests performed on patients with influenza had a large number of unknown results. But this does not necessarily indicate that the unknown test results were actually undetected coronavirus cases.
“They only tested what they knew, this coronavirus was unknown,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety. He adds that such a thing would not be unusual in other parts of the world.
“We are looking for common suspects. We always look for horses, but never zebras,” he explains.
Subsequently, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control carried out a retrospective investigation on influenza cases registered in the region since October 2019 in two hospitals in Wuhan, in an attempt to search for traces of coronavirus. But according to a study published in the journal Nature, they were unable to detect samples of the virus prior to January 2020. Such studies have not yet been conducted in other cities in Hubei.
On the other hand, increasing the number of flu cases could have helped spread the coronavirus unintentionally, said Yanzhong Huang, a researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Those people were going to be treated in hospitals, increasing the chances of COVID infection there,” he said.
Data on the flu epidemic show that the largest outbreak occurred in Yichang. Although there is no evidence of a link between this and the emergence of SARS-CoV 2, data indicating a flu-like outbreak in various cities in Hubei will likely be of interest to those investigating the origin of the coronavirus.
The Chinese government said the pandemic started at the Huanan Fish Market in Wuhan, where meat from exotic animals was being sold. But that claim was at least partially challenged by a Lancet study of the first patients in December, which found that a third of the 41 infected in that month had no direct link to the market.
The city of Yichang, located 320 kilometers west of Wuhan, has been hit the hardest by the flu epidemic, with almost three times as many cases as Wuhan in the week since December 2, 2019.
Andrew Mertha, an expert on China-related issues at Johns Hopkins University, said that the Yichang epidemic, while not linked to COVID-19 in the papers, could still open up new theories about the origin of the virus.
“This big increase means that something must have happened,” he said.
Editing: Monica Bonea
