BEIJING: Chinese authorities refused to provide World Health Organization researchers with raw, personalized data on the first cases of Covid-19 that could help them determine how and when the coronavirus began to spread in the US. China, according to WHO researchers who described heated exchanges for lack of detail.
Chinese authorities rejected requests to provide these data on 174 cases of Covid-19 that they identified since the first phase of the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. Investigators are part of a team of the WHO this week completed a month-long mission to China to determine the origins of the pandemic.
WHO team members reported that Chinese officials and scientists provided their own extensive summaries and analysis of data on the cases. They also provided aggregate data and analysis on retrospective searches through medical records during the months leading up to the Wuhan outbreak identification, saying they had found no evidence of the virus.
But the WHO team was not allowed to see the raw underlying data from these retrospective studies, which could allow them to do their own analysis on the speed and extent of the virus in China, they said. tell team members. Member States usually provide this data (anonymized but disaggregated so that investigators can see all other relevant details of each case) as part of WHO investigations, according to team members.
“They showed us a couple of examples, but that’s not the same as doing them all, which is standard epidemiological research,” said Dominic Dwyer, an Australian microbiologist on the WHO team. “So, you know, the interpretation of this data becomes more limited from our point of view, although the other side may consider it to be quite good.”