China doubles down on COVID narrative as WHO investigation looms
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[January 05, 2021]
By David Stanway
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - As a team from the
World Health Organization (WHO) prepares to visit China to investigate
the origins of COVID-19, Beijing has stepped up efforts not only to
prevent new outbreaks, but also shape the narrative about when and where
the pandemic began.
China has dismissed criticism of its early handling of the coronavirus,
first identified in the city of Wuhan at the end of 2019, and foreign
ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Monday that the country would
welcome the WHO team.
But amid simmering geopolitical tensions, experts said the investigators
were unlikely to be allowed to scrutinise some of the more sensitive
aspects of the outbreak, with Beijing desperate to avoid blame for a
virus that has killed more than 1.8 million people worldwide.
"Even before this investigation, top officials from both sides have been
very polarised in their opinions on the origins of the outbreak," said
Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, a
U.S. think tank.
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"They will have to be politically savvy and draw conclusions that are
acceptable to all the major parties," he added.
While other countries continue to struggle with infection surges, China
has aggressively doused flare-ups. After a new cluster of cases last
week, the city of Shenyang sealed off entire communities and required
all non-essential workers to stay home.
On Saturday, senior diplomat Wang Yi praised the anti-pandemic efforts,
saying China not only curbed domestic infections, but also "took the
lead in building a global anti-epidemic defence" by providing aid to
more than 150 countries.
But mindful of the criticism China has faced worldwide, Wang also became
the highest-ranking official to question the consensus about COVID-19's
origins, saying "more and more studies" show that it emerged in multiple
regions.
China is also the only country to claim COVID-19 can be transmitted via
cold chain imports, with the country blaming new outbreaks in Beijing
and Dalian on contaminated shipments - even though the WHO has
downplayed those risks.
TRANSPARENCY
China has been accused of a cover-up that delayed its initial response,
allowing the virus to spread further.
The topic remains sensitive, with only a handful of studies into the
origins of COVID-19 made available to the public.
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![](../images/010521PIX/news_m25.jpg)
Visitors attend an exhibition on the fight against the coronavirus
disease (COVID-19) outbreak, at Wuhan Parlor Convention Center that
previously served as a makeshift hospital for COVID-19 patients in
Wuhan, Hubei province, China December 31, 2020. REUTERS/Tingshu
Wang/File Photo
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But there have also been signs China is willing to share information
that contradicts the official picture.
Last week, a study by China's Center for Disease Control showed that
blood samples from 4.43% of Wuhan's population contained COVID-19
antibodies, indicating that the city's infection rates were far
higher than originally acknowledged.
But scientists said China must also share any findings suggesting
COVID-19 was circulating domestically long before it was officially
identified in December 2019.
An Italian study showed that COVID-19 might have been in Europe
several months before China's first official case. Chinese state
media used the paper to support theories that COVID-19 originated
overseas and entered China via contaminated frozen food or foreign
athletes competing at the World Military Games in Wuhan in October
2019.
Raina MacIntyre, head of the Kirby Institute's Biosecurity Research
Program in Australia, said the investigation needed to draw "a
comprehensive global picture of the epidemiological clues",
including any evidence COVID-19 was present outside of China before
December 2019.
However, political issues mean they are unlikely to be given much
leeway to investigate one hypothesis, that the outbreak was caused
by a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, said MacIntyre.
"I think it is unlikely all viruses in the lab at the time will be
made available to the team," she said. "So I do not think we will
ever know the truth."
(Reporting by David Stanway; Additional reporting by Martin Pollard
in Wuhan. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
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