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The WHO China research team found 13 nCoV variants in Wuhan during the outbreak in late 2019, suggesting that the disease may be larger than reported.
The information was the researcher of the World Health Organization delegation Peter Ben Embarek, said on 2/14. Officials from the country told the WHO expert group that headed to China to investigate to speak to the first patients, including an office worker in his 40s, who was confirmed infected on December 8.
Data from the WHO mission trip may heighten concerns among scientists working on the origin of Covid-19. “The virus was widely circulating in Wuhan in December, this is a new discovery,” said Embarek.
The WHO expert added that the delegation was presented by Chinese scientists on 174 nCoV infections in Wuhan city and surrounding areas in December 2019. 100 of these cases were confirmed with nCoV infection by laboratory tests and the remaining 74 they were confirmed by a clinical diagnosis based on the patient’s symptoms.
The WHO delegation visited the Hubei Center for Animal Disease Control and Prevention in Wuhan, China, on February 2. Picture: Reuters.
Previous data suggests that Covid-19 may have affected more than 1,000 people in Wuhan at the end of December 2019, and Chinese doctors can only pay early attention to serious infections like, Embarek said, 174 previous cases.
“We have not done any predictive modeling since then. But we know, in the data from people infected with nCoV, about 15% of the cases are advanced, and most are mild cases.” Embarek made a prediction base.
The WHO expert added that his delegation was also able to collect 13 different nCoV gene sequences since December 2019. These sequences, if examined with broader data on virus infection in China in 2019, could provide potential clues as to where and where when the Covid-19 outbreak occurred before December.
“Some come from the markets, but some do not. This is something that we have found as part of our mission,” Embarek said of the nCoV strains.
Changes in the genetic makeup of viruses are common and often harmless, and occur over time as the disease passes between humans or animals. The expert Embarek refused to conclude on the influence that the 13 variants of the virus have had in the history of the appearance of Covid-19 before December.
However, the discovery of so many different variants of nCoV may also indicate that the virus has been around the longest in December 2019, as some virologists previously suggested.
“Since there was genetic diversity in the nCoV sequences sampled in Wuhan in December 2019, it is likely that the virus has been circulating for more than a month,” says Giao, says Edward Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney.
Holmes, who has studied the timing of the onset of nCoV, said the 13 strains of the virus could indicate that nCoV had not been detected for a time before the outbreak in Wuhan, including the first time it was discovered in the seafood market by Hoa Nam.
The WHO international team of experts has just completed their investigation in the city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 began, with an assessment that there was insufficient evidence to conclude that nCoV had spread in Wuhan before December 2019. , when the authorities announced the first cases.
Dominic Dwyer, an Australian expert and also a member of the WHO investigation team, said China refused to provide raw data on the first 174 nCoV infections in Wuhan, including details of the cases. Instead, Beijing only published the summary.
The United Kingdom and the United States have expressed concern about the WHO Covid-19 investigation, especially about the level of access to information provided by the group to the Chinese side. In response, the Chinese embassy in the United States accused Washington of “deeply damaging international cooperation in the response to Covid-19, but it seems that nothing has happened and it is blaming the WHO, and other countries. Support this agency. “.
Ngoc Anh (Follow, continue CNN)
