Researchers at the World Health Organization are looking for information about a second food market in the Chinese city of Wuhan after the first officially confirmed Covid-19 case, called patient zero, told them their parents had bought there.
Chinese authorities have said since early last year that the first confirmed victim was a resident of Wuhan, whose surname was Chen, who fell ill on December 8, 2019 and had no connection to the seafood market. of Huanan, which was related to many of the earliest infections.
This case, and more recent evidence, led a WHO team to investigate the origins of the pandemic to conclude that the virus may have first jumped from an animal to a human before and elsewhere, and that had spread through Wuhan when an outbreak appeared in the Huanan market. it happened.
The alleged zero patient met with WHO researchers during his recent four-week visit to Wuhan and told them that his parents had visited another local community food market, according to three members of the ‘team.
The revelation came at the end of the man’s meeting with WHO researchers and they were unable to identify the market or obtain further details, team members said. They declined to comment further.
CNN first reported investigators’ interest in the parents of the zero patient in an interview with Peter Daszak, a member of the WHO team who said the parents had given negative feedback, but Chinese authorities should follow your contacts in the market. He did not respond to requests for comment.
The Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan has been linked to many of the earliest Covid-19 infections.
Photo:
Getty Images / Getty Images
It was not possible to determine when the parents were tested and if they had PCR tests, which detect a current but not past infection, or antibody tests, which can reveal past infections but can also go away to levels. undetectable over time. Both types of tests would not have been available in early December 2019 because the virus had not yet been identified.
WHO team members want to identify the market to find out if wild animals were being sold there and establish whether any of the 174 confirmed cases from December 2019 or possible previous cases were connected.
The team and its Chinese counterparts have already established that some of the 174 had connections to markets other than Huanan, although they do not name these places.
Wuhan, with a population of 11 million, has about 400 food markets, according to local authorities. Residents say several of them have sold wildlife as meat or for traditional medicine, and sellers say the goods were often traded between Huanan and other markets.
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There is clear evidence of simultaneous transmission of the virus elsewhere outside the market
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The lack of details about the first known case of a pandemic that has now killed more than two million shows the magnitude of the work that still needs to be done to reconcile the Huanan market outbreak in December with other data that show the virus infected people in other places in Wuhan. at the same time and may have started to spread in November or October 2019.
“We need more studies of the first cases,” Peter Ben Embarek, leader of the WHO team, told the newspaper. “This is in our recommendations for new jobs.”
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Health Commission did not respond to requests for comment.
The episode “highlights the need for the WHO team to continue its research segment in China,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior global health member of the New York Foreign Relations Council. “Given the complexity and importance of his work, one month is not enough to draw conclusive conclusions.”
In the coming days, the WHO will publish a summary report on the Wuhan mission, which is expected to include a number of recommendations for studies on the origins of the pandemic. According to WHO team members, the report will call for a more detailed examination of the first and possible cases, including the alleged zero patient and their relatives.
A full report on the trip is said to be expected weeks later.
Meanwhile, international controversy over the origins of the pandemic has rekindled, and the United States has expressed concern over the lack of transparency after the Wall Street Journal reported that China had not shared raw data on confirmed cases. or possible first cases.
The World Health Organization mission in Wuhan said the coronavirus is likely to spread naturally to humans through an animal. WSJ’s Jeremy Page reports on what scientists learned during their weeks of research. Photo: Thomas Peter / Reuters
Beijing responded by accusing Washington of undermining the WHO and reiterating its claim that the virus could have originated in another country and spread to Wuhan through imported frozen foods.
However, Liang Wannian, the head of a Covid-19 expert group at China’s National Health Commission, acknowledged during a press conference at the end of the WHO mission that some of the first 174 confirmed cases “were associated with other markets” in Wuhan.
Chinese authorities initially thought the Huanan market was the source of the outbreak because many of the first cases identified had been visited or worked there, because there were stalls selling the kind of wildlife that had spread coronavirus in the past, and because environmental samples taken there tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.
WHO scientists and other experts have long believed that the new coronavirus probably originated in a bat and spread to humans through another animal, probably on a farm or in a market.
WHO researchers say they confirmed during their visit that there were at least two types of animals that could bring the new coronavirus to the Huanan market, ferret badgers and rabbits, which present a possible route to start the pandemic.
They say they have not yet established what other animals were sold, legally or illegally, but the supply chains at the stops in question lead to parts of southern China, where the best-known relatives of SARS-CoV-2 have been found in bats.
At the same time, there are indications that the virus was already spreading across the city within days of the first known cases on the market, suggesting that the outbreak could have started elsewhere and spread to the Huanan market.
“There is clear evidence of simultaneous transmission of the virus elsewhere outside the market,” Thea Fischer, a Danish epidemiologist on the WHO team, told Wuhan journalists. “The market seems less likely to be the source of the virus epidemic.”
Dr. Ben Embarek told CNN in an interview this month that the zero patient was a forty-year-old office worker in a private company and had no recent travel history. “He has a very, very boring, normal life with no things to do hiking in the mountains,” Dr. Ben Embarek said.
Dr. Daszak said the man’s main hobby was surfing the Internet.
Some researchers have pointed to an elderly man who fell ill on December 1, 2019 as a possible infection before the zero patient, but a doctor who treated him said he had other chronic illnesses and could not speak and the exact date of symptoms. the appearance was not clear, as she was loved by relatives.
Write to Jeremy Page at [email protected], Drew Hinshaw at [email protected] and Betsy McKay at [email protected]
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