For months, China resisted allowing experts from the World Health Organization to enter the country to trace the origins of the global pandemic, concerned that such an inquiry could draw attention to the government’s first wrong steps in dealing with the outbreak.
After a global uproar, the Chinese government finally gave in, allowing a team of 14 scientists to visit laboratories, disease control centers and livestock markets in the past 12 days in the city of Wuhan.
But instead of scorn, WHO experts on Tuesday praised Chinese officials and endorsed critical parts of their narrative, including some that were controversial.
The WHO team opened the door to a theory adopted by Chinese officials, saying it was possible that the virus could have spread to humans through shipments of frozen food, an idea that has gained little traction with scientists outside China. And experts have pledged to investigate reports that the virus could be present outside China months before the outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019, a longstanding demand from Chinese authorities.
“We should really look for evidence of previous circulation wherever it is,” said Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist on the WHO team, at a three-hour news conference in Wuhan, where experts presented their preliminary findings alongside Chinese scientists.
Some scientists fear that shifting attention to other countries could cause research to lose focus. Determining what happened in the early days of the outbreak in China is considered critical to avert another pandemic.
WHO, by definition, is indebted to its member countries and has long adopted a diplomatic tone in dealing with the Chinese government, which is notoriously resistant to outside scrutiny. The investigation is still in its early stages – it could take years – and WHO officials have promised a rigorous and transparent examination of data and research from China and other countries.
Still, the findings announced on Tuesday have given Beijing a victory in public relations as it is under attack by officials in the United States and elsewhere for its initial efforts to hide the outbreak.
“This is the most reliable support that China has received in terms of its official narrative,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior global health researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Huang said WHO should continue to put pressure on China for data and access.
“A visit is not enough time to do a thorough investigation,” he said. “They are doing all the work within the parameters set by the Chinese government.”
The team did not report any major advances, but said it found important clues. The virus was circulating in Wuhan several weeks before it appeared in the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, where some of the first groups were initially reported, experts said. It is more likely to have appeared in bats and spread to humans through another small mammal, although experts have not been able to identify the species.
“All the work that has been done on the virus and trying to identify its origin continues to point to a natural reservoir,” said Peter K. Ben Embarek, a WHO food safety scientist who leads the team of experts. Press conference.
Dr. Ben Embarek said it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus had accidentally leaked from a laboratory that was studying coronavirus in bats in Wuhan. It is a notion that some skeptical scientists say is worth exploring, although it remains largely unfounded. This theory is different from a widely discredited one, promoted by some Republicans in the United States, who claimed that a laboratory in China had manufactured the virus for use as a bio-weapon.
The team met last week with leaders from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which houses a state-of-the-art laboratory, and Dr. Ben Embarek said “it was very unlikely that anything could escape from such a place”, citing security protocols there. .
WHO experts tried to focus their comments on Tuesday on the scientific aspects of the mission. But the investigation has often been overshadowed by politics.
Some officials in the United States and other Western countries doubted the independence of the WHO investigation, arguing that China is trying to control the outcome. The government has repeatedly postponed the visit of WHO experts and sought to limit the scope of its mission. And the authorities are firmly in control of the virus-related research in China, raising concerns that they might try to prevent the disclosure of embarrassing information.
The Chinese government tried to shift the focus elsewhere, continuing to suggest that the virus may have originated abroad. The Chinese ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, recently suggested that the United States should allow WHO to send investigators there as part of its investigation.
Chinese officials strongly promoted the idea that the virus came from abroad at a news conference on Tuesday, arguing that the search for the virus’s origin should focus on places outside China.
The investigation “will not be restricted to any location,” said Liang Wannian, who led the team of Chinese scientists who helped with the WHO mission. He said that Chinese researchers found no evidence that the virus was circulating in China on a large scale before December 2019.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price told a news conference that the United States would wait to see the WHO report before drawing conclusions about its findings and how transparent Beijing was with investigators.
During their visit to Wuhan, WHO staff members said they were trying to avoid the policy and promised to ask tough questions. While in Wuhan, where they were subjected to two weeks of quarantine before starting fieldwork, they gave interviews to the media and were photographed for coronavirus tests. They turned to social media to bring more transparency to the visit, posting photos and comments about their conversations with Chinese scientists.
Experts repeatedly praised their Chinese colleagues, saying that the government had worked in good faith to grant access to important locations, including laboratories and markets. At the news conference on Tuesday, the experts were cordial and did not contest the statements of their Chinese hosts.
The team will face pressure in the coming months, not only to resolve complicated scientific issues, but to demonstrate that it is conducting a tough and fair investigation.
“China’s strategic narrative now is: ‘This has been part of China’s investigation, and we have done that, and we are going to move forward,’ said Daniel R. Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University.
Lucey said that experts would need to produce a breakthrough to demonstrate credibility.
“If the team doesn’t come up with something substantial,” he added, “there is also a risk that people will say that this was all just a show.”
Albee Zhang contributed research.