Beijing has long insisted it was cooperating with efforts to trace the source of the COVID-19 pandemic. A new report suggests otherwise.
A leaked WHO report claims China did ‘little’ to investigate the origin of the first COVID-19 cases. Picture: Nicolas Asfouri/AFPSource:AFP
In the months following the emergence of COVID-19 in China, authorities did “little” to try to find the source of the infection, a leaked World Health Organisation (WHO) document claims.
The first cases of coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019, with the virus soon moving to other countries across the world.
There have now been more than 111 million confirmed infections and more than 2.4 million deaths worldwide as a result of the virus.
China has continually claimed that the virus was circulating in other parts of the country before emerging in Wuhan, with officials even pointing the finger at countries such as Australia, India and the United States by claiming the virus was brought in through imported seafood and beef.
Now, an internal WHO travel report summary seen by The Guardian, has suggested Chinese authorities may have been dragging their feet when it came to investigating the origins of the outbreak.
The leaked WHO report claimed China did ‘little’ to investigate the origin of the virus in the months following its emergence. Picture: Lintao Zhang/Getty ImagesSource:Getty Images
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The report, which was dated August 10, 2020, also claimed Chinese officials gave WHO scientists little information during their own investigation of the virus.
The report summarises WHO program manager and mission leader Dr Peter Ben Embarek’s trip to China between July 10 and August 3, 2020 to “review work done so far on the origin of the virus”.
During the trip, his team met with relevant ministries and agencies to discuss the emergence of the COVID-19 virus.
“Following extensive discussions with and presentation from Chinese counterparts, it appears that little had been done in terms of epidemiological investigations around Wuhan since January 2020,” the report stated.
“The data presented orally gave a few more details than what was presented at the emergency committee meetings in January 2020. No PowerPoint presentations were made and no documents were shared.”
The emergence of this document comes after a team of WHO scientists completed a more recent trip to China last month to further investigate the origins of the virus.
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China's Coverup
Nov 17, 2019
China’s first case of COVID-19 is reported, according to government data that describes him as a 55-year-old man from Hubei. This data is not released until March after authorities identified at least 266 people with the virus.
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China's Coverup
Nov 17, 2019
One to five new cases of the lung infections are reported each day from this date at hospitals around Wuhan.
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China's Coverup
Dec 10, 2019
Wei Guixian, a seafood merchant in a Wuhan’s Huanan wet-market, becomes sick. She was released from hospital in January and remains the earliest identified patient.
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China's Coverup
Dec 20, 2019
A total of 60 cases of SARS-CoV-2, the virus’ official name, were recorded in China.
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China's Coverup
Dec 26, 2019
Multiple Chinese genomics companies are sent evidence of a new virus from the Wuhan patient data.
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China's Coverup
Dec 27, 2019
Dr Zhang Jixian from Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, warns authorities of a new disease affecting 180 patients was caused by a novel coronavirus. She would later defend China’s response, describing it as “timely”.
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China's Coverup
Dec 30, 2019
Chinese officials alert the World Health Organisation’s China office of an outbreak of pneumonia with an unknown cause in Wuhan.
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China's Coverup
Dec 30, 2019
On the same day, Chinese internet authorities begin stripping posts from social media that include the terms “Wuhan unknown pneumonia,” “SARS variation,” “Wuhan seafood market”. They also remove any related keywords and phrases critical of the government’s handling of the infection.
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China's Coverup
Jan 1, 2020
The health commission in China’s Hubei province orders a genomics company to stop all testing and destroy samples of the new coronavirus, according to the Straits Times.
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China's Coverup
Jan 1, 2020
Officials finally close the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, but they are accused of eliminating evidence by disinfecting it without swabbing individual animals and cages for samples or drawing blood from infected workers.
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China's Coverup
Jan 1, 2020
Wuhan police publicly reprimand and bring in for questioning eight doctors who had warned about the new virus via social media in late December.
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China's Coverup
Jan 1, 2020
Condemned for “making false statements on the internet”, those rounded up included Dr Li Wenliang. An opthomolagist, Dr Li would later die of COVID-19, but not before he was forced to write a Maoist-style self-criticism denouncing his own prior statements.
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China's Coverup
Jan 2, 2020
The government run Wuhan Institute of Virology identifies coronavirus and maps its genetic sequence but doesn't publicly announce the findings.
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China's Coverup
Jan 3, 2020
The National Health Commission, China’s top health authority, issues a gag order directing that all virus samples be moved to designated state testing facilities or destroyed. Institutions are also ordered to not publish any research or information about the disease.
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China's Coverup
Jan 5, 2020
Researchers in Shanghai map the coronavirus genome and hand the data to Beijing, urging that control measures be introduced.
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China's Coverup
Jan 6, 2020
China’s CDC activates emergency response, but this is not publicly announced.
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China's Coverup
Jan 7, 2020
President Xi Jinping takes charge of response, although this is not publicly disclosed until February.
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China's Coverup
Jan 9, 2020
Chinese officials and the World Health Organization announce a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan.
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China's Coverup
Jan 10, 2020
Chinese government expert Wang Guangfa describes the Wuhan pneumonia as “under control” and a “mild condition” on state television.
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China's Coverup
Jan 11, 2020
Frustrated that his work to map the genome hasn’t yet been released by the government, Professor Zhang Yongzhen publicly releases the sequence, six days after handing it to national authorities and seeing no response.
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China's Coverup
Jan 12, 2020
Prof Zhang’s lab is closed by Shanghai authorities for “rectification”, just a day after sharing genomic sequence data for the first time and allowing scientists around the world to begin looking for a cure.
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China's Coverup
Jan 14, 2020
The WHO announces for the first time there may be “limited” person-to-person transmission on the same day that the National Health Commission holds a national meeting on fighting virus, which they would not publicly disclose until February.
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China's Coverup
Jan 14, 2020
The cover-up continues as plainclothes police in Wuhan arrest journalists and destroy footage from their phones and cameras, which are confiscated.
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China's Coverup
Jan 15, 2020
Chinese CDC emergency centre Li Qun claims on state TV the risk of transmission is low. “After careful screening and prudent judgment, we have reached the latest understanding that the risk of human-to-human transmission is low.”
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China's Coverup
Jan 18, 2020
Tens of thousands of families in Wuhan turn out for a “potluck” banquet to celebrate Lunar New Year, encouraged by authorites to try to attempt to break a world record.
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China's Coverup
Jan 20, 2020
As President Xi makes first public statement about the outbreak, he avoids mentioning human-to-human transmission, but encourages people to continue celebrating the Lunar New Year, with “caution”.
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China's Coverup
Jan 20, 2020
It is left to government task force chief Zhong Nanshan to announce the same day that the virus is being spread person-to-person. Dr Nanshan will later say that if authorities hadn’t covered up the spread: “the number of sick would have been greatly reduced.”
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China's Coverup
Jan 20, 2020
Meanwhile, Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang blames Beijing for imposing rules stopping him disclosing the threat.
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China's Coverup
Jan 23, 2020
Chinese authorities finally lock down Wuhan, but not before allowing 5 million to flee the city without screening.
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China's Coverup
Feb 6, 2020
China’s internet watchdog announces it has set up supervision on social media platforms to “create a good cyberspace environment to win the battle against the epidemic”. This follow’s Xi’s directive that online media be controlled to “maintain social stability”.
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China's Coverup
Feb 6, 2020
The same day, prominent citizen journalist and former human rights lawyer Chen Qiushi disappears in Wuhan after releasing videos of packed hospitals and distraught families. His whereabouts is still unknown.
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China's Coverup
Feb 7, 2020
Dr Li Wenliang’s death from coronavirus, five weeks after police detained him for trying to alert fellow doctors to the outbreak, sparks a national outpouring of grief and open anger at Chinese authorities.
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China's Coverup
Feb 9, 2020
Another citizen journalist, Wuhan businessman Fang Bin disappears after posting footage on social media from hard-hit Wuhan. His whereabouts is still unknown.
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China's Coverup
Feb 15, 2020
Lawyer and civil rights activist Xu Zhiyong is arrested after 50 days on the run, after he had published an essay calling on Xi to step down for suppressing information.
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China's Coverup
Feb 16, 2020
Prominent Xi critic, Tsinghua University professor Xu Zhangrun under is placed under house arrest and cut off from the internet after he slamming Beijing. “The coronavirus epidemic has revealed the rotten core of Chinese governance,” he wrote in Viral Alarm: When Fury Overcomes Fear.
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China's Coverup
Feb 19, 2020
Chinese foreign correspondents from US publications including The New York Times and Wall St Journal have their press credentials revoked by Beijing and are expelled from the country.
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China's Coverup
Mar 14, 2020
Real estate entrepreneur and activist Ren Zhiqiang, known as The Cannon on social media, disappears in Beijing after criticizing Xi’s virus response. He described Xi as a “clown” who had made the outbreak worse. On April 7 Beijing announces it is investigating him for corruption.
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At the end of this four-week trip, Dr Embarek appeared to somewhat agree with China’s claims the virus could have originated outside of the country.
Speaking at a press conference in Wuhan, he said the virus was likely introduced thorough an “intermediary host species” before being passed on to humans, adding further investigations would be needed.
Dr Embarek also refused to rule out that the virus could have been brought in from somewhere else in “South-East Asia”, saying the supply chain of frozen goods to markets in Wuhan would also need to be investigated.
“There is the potential to continue to follow this lead and further look at the supply chain and animals that were supplied to the markets in frozen and other processed and semi-processed form, or raw form,” he said.
“These studies from different countries suggests SARS-CoV-2 circulation preceding the initial detection of cases by several weeks.
“Some of the suspected positive samples were detected even earlier than the first case reported. This indicates the possibility of the missed reported circulation in other regions.”
Dr Embarek also rejected the claims the virus escaped from a lab in China, a theory which the US has been investigating, calling the hypothesis “extremely unlikely”.
China's ‘wet’ markets have gained a bad international reputation as many believe the COVID-19 virus emerged from one of these markets in Wuhan. Picture: Hector Retamal/AFPSource:AFP
While WHO’s official findings from the investigation were inconclusive, an Australian infectious diseases expert who travelled to Wuhan as part of the investigation team had a slightly different take on the result of the investigation.
Australian microbiologist and infectious diseases expert, Professor Dominic Dwyer, cast doubts on claims the virus could have first emerged outside of China.
“I must say the evidence for the virus being elsewhere before it took off in Wuhan is minimal … I think at this stage it’s a very big call to say it started elsewhere in the world and then came to China, however, that does need to be explored,” he told news.com.au.
“There is no doubt the outbreak got going in China, in the market and then in Wuhan, but what happened a month or two before that is really key and open to debate.
“It’s more than likely it started there … the environment in Wuhan’s Huanan Market clearly was ripe for allowing the virus to break out.”