WHO expert says China mission going 'very well'

Wuhan (AFP) - The World Health Organization mission probing the origins of Covid-19 in China was going "very well", one of its members said Tuesday, as the team visited an animal disease control centre in the city where the first cases were reported.

China has faced criticism at home and abroad for playing down the initial outbreak and concealing information when it first emerged in Wuhan in December 2019, raising doubts over the usefulness of the WHO trip.

The investigative team arrived at the Hubei province animal disease prevention centre in Wuhan Tuesday morning, where the group donned white hazmat suits for a tour of the facilities.

Team member Peter Daszak told journalists the mission was "excellent" and proceeding "very well" as the group was driven into the facility, while team lead Peter Ben Embarek nodded when asked if the experts were being given sufficient access in Wuhan.

Beijing is keen to put the focus on its recovery from the outbreak. The team of scientists toured a propaganda exhibition celebrating China's recovery from the pandemic in Wuhan on Saturday.

Daszak said after the tour that the team had held a "very informative meeting" and also tweeted that WHO experts had met with "key staff in charge of livestock surveillance" and had "in-depth discussion."

The experts also received a visit at their hotel on Tuesday from officials of the Wuhan Blood Centre, which collected blood plasma last year from recovered Covid-19 patients.

On Sunday the team went to the market in Wuhan where one of the first reported clusters of infections emerged over a year ago, which Daszak tweeted was a "critical" stop.

RFA has some sobering truths:

1 Feb: Radio Free Asia: WHO Team Unlikely to Meet With Critics of China’s Handling of Pandemic: Rights Group
Reported by RFA’s Mandarin and Cantonese Services. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Since emerging from a 14-day quarantine period, the team — which has said it isn’t trying to apportion blame for the pandemic — have also visited hospitals and a seafood market linked to an early cluster of cases.

But the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) group said that even if the group were to try, they would have problems talking to anyone offering a different view from the government’s official narrative.
“Even if they try, the WHO experts would have difficulties finding anybody to talk to, from whistleblowing doctors, citizen reporters, to victims’ families, or any critics of the Chinese government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak,” CHRD said in a report on its website.

Rather, the authorities have been suppressing information and penalizing dissent, it said.
“Citizen journalists who went to Wuhan in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak to report from the frontlines have either gone missing or went to jail,” it said.
“The exact whereabouts of Fang Bin and Chen Qiushi remain unknown; Zhang Zhan was sentenced to 4 years in jail; and Chen Mei and Cai Wei, who tried to preserve censored COVID information, are still detained.”
It added: “Outspoken critics of President Xi Jinping for his handling of the pandemic are locked up – Ren Zhiqiang received 18 years in jail, Guo Quan and Xu Zhiyong remain in pretrial detention.”

The group also cited the cases of two women who spoke out about vaccine safety who have “disappeared,” and are presumed detained by the authorities.
Hua Xiuzhen was last seen on Jan. 13 in Shanghai, escorted away by Yangpu district neighborhood committee officials, while He Fangmei went “missing” in Henan province on Oct. 9, it said.
“What the two missing women have in common is their tenacious campaign for transparency in the government’s vaccination programs and their efforts to seek accountability,” CHRD said...

According to Reuters, no full itinerary for the group’s field work has been announced, and journalists covering the tightly controlled visit have been kept at a distance from team members.
However, the WHO tweeted last week that the team would include a visit to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which carries out research into bat coronaviruses, sparking speculation that there is a link with its activities and the emergence of COVID-19 in the same city...

Political commentator Fu Shenqi said city authorities have “reorganized” the South China Seafood Market linked to the start of the first outbreak beyond recognition.
“Equipment, materials, and data in P4 laboratories have been . . . hidden and the hospitals are fully prepared for these visits,” Fu said in a commentary broadcast on RFA’s Mandarin Service.
“What is there left for the experts to investigate?” he said, adding that the team is fully expecting this.

“The WHO doesn’t want the international community to have high expectations for this investigation,” Fu wrote. “Official CCP rhetoric is even clearer that this isn’t an investigation, but more of a collaboration ... with Chinese experts on the origins of the virus.”
“We can expect the WHO to go through the motions with this probe ... and China wants it to conclude that the source of the virus wasn’t in Wuhan,” Fu wrote.

Despite speculation around the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Beijing has repeatedly tried to change the narrative around the origins of the coronavirus, with state-run media frequently suggesting that it was brought to the country from somewhere else.

Fu said a vaguely worded report from the WHO team would be most likely to win the approval of the Chinese government...
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/critics-02012021115321.html

AP, for the most part, carries water for China, and only inserts “without offering evidence” for the Trump administration!

1 Feb: L.A. Times: How experts will hunt for COVID origins in China
By SAM McNEIL, Associated Press
The visit has been shrouded in secrecy: The WHO tweeted a few details of what they will do, but it’s unknown how much access China will give the researchers to the sites they want to visit and the people they want to talk to...
It plans to visit hospitals, laboratories and markets, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Huanan market and the Wuhan Center for Disease Control laboratory, the WHO said...
U.S. officials in the Trump administration suggested ***WITHOUT OFFERING EVIDENCE that the virus could have escaped from the institute.

Experts say it’s unlikely the new coronavirus emerged from the lab in Wuhan and overwhelmingly say analysis of the new coronavirus’ genome rules out the possibility that it was engineered by humans...

Wuhan is where COVID-19 cases were first detected, but it is highly possible the virus came to the industrial city of 11 million people from elsewhere (SAYS AP, WITHOUT PROVIDING EV EVIDENCE?)...

The big question is what China will allow the researchers to see and do. The ruling Communist Party is concerned the research could shed light on its handling of the virus that could open it up to international criticism — and even demands for financial compensation if it is found to have been negligent.
China has stifled independent reports about the outbreak at home and published little information on its research into the origins of the virus. An AP investigation found that the government has strictly controlled all COVID-19-related research and forbids researchers from speaking to the media.

Another AP investigation found WHO officials privately complained that China had dragged its feet on sharing critical information about the outbreak, including the new virus’ genetic sequence, even as the U.N. health agency publicly praised China for what it called a speedy response.

China, stung by complaints it allowed the disease to spread, has suggested (WITHOUT PROVIDING EVIDENCE, AP?) the virus could have come from abroad...
An expert on the WHO team has suggested the same thing, and this is a possibility researchers are exploring...

WHEN WILL WE KNOW THE ANSWERS?
The search for the origins of COVID-19 is likely to take years. It took more than a decade to find the origins of SARS, and the origins of Ebola, first identified in the 1970s, remain elusive...
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-02-01/explainer-how-experts-will-hunt-for-covid-origins-in-china

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