WHO team visits Wuhan wet market
Print Edition
A WORLD Health Organization team looking into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic yesterday visited the food market in Wuhan that was linked to many early infections.
The team members visited the Huanan Seafood Market, which has been sealed since January last year, for about an hour in the afternoon, and one of them flashed a thumbs up sign when reporters asked how the trip was going.
The market was the site of a December 2019 outbreak of the virus. Scientists initially suspected the virus came from wild animals sold in the market. The market has since been largely ruled out but it could provide hints to how the virus spread so widely.
“Very important site visits today — a wholesale market first & Huanan Seafood Market just now,” Peter Daszak, a zoologist with the US group EcoHealth Alliance and a member of the WHO team, said in a tweet. “Very informative & critical for our joint teams to understand the epidemiology of COVID as it started to spread at the end of 2019.”
Earlier in the day, the team members walked through sections of the Baishazhou market — one of the largest wet markets in Wuhan. The market was the food distribution center for Wuhan during the city’s 76-day lockdown last year.
The members, with expertise in veterinary medicine, virology, food safety and epidemiology, have so far visited two hospitals that treated patients in the early days of the outbreak — Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital and the Hubei Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine Hospital.
They met with medical personnel and some of the first COVID-19 patients, said Mi Feng, spokesperson for the National Health Commission.
Pinning down an outbreak’s animal reservoir is an exhaustive endeavor that takes years of research including taking animal samples, genetic analysis and epidemiological studies.
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