A global team of researchers on Monday visited a regional disease control center that was instrumental in managing the coronavirus outbreak.
The group of World Health Organization (WHO) inspectors arrived in Hubei’s regional capital, Wuhan, last month to look for flashes and visited hospitals that treated many of the earliest patients and seafood market where there were cases of infection with the then unknown virus. it appeared in December 2019.
The team visited the Hubei Regional Center for Disease Control (Hubei CDC) on Monday amid strict Chinese controls on access to information about the virus. China has tried to avoid the blame for false allegations in an early response to the uprising, promoting other theories that the virus originated elsewhere and may have been brought to Wuhan from the outside the country.
Following the visit, team member Peter Daszak told reporters that “it was a very, very important meeting. ”No other information was provided.
The evidence the team gathers will add to what is expected to be a question for years to answer. Breaking down an outdoor animal reservoir requires a lot of research including taking animal samples, genetic analysis and epidemiological studies.
China has largely prevented domestic evacuation through rigorous testing and contact detection. The wearing of masks in public is monitored almost universally and locks are common on communities and even cities where issues are detected. The latest incidents have been in the frigid northeast, with 33 new cases reported nationally Monday in three districts.
Nevertheless, China registered more than 2,000 new domestic cases of COVID-19 in January, the highest monthly total since the last outbreak in Wuhan in March last year. Two died of the disease in January, the first reported death of COVID in China in several months.
Schools have gone online and travel has been severely cut during the New Year holidays this month, with the government offering to encourage people to stay put at the most important time for family gatherings across of the country.
The WHO team completed two weeks of quarantine in Wuhan last week and began their delayed investigation into the origin of the virus that triggered the COVID-19 pandemic.