More than a year after the emergence of a new coronavirus in China, a team of experts from the World Health Organization finally arrived on Thursday in the city of Wuhan to start hunting for its source, Chinese state media reported.
Research by a team of 10 scientists is a critical step in understanding how the virus has spread from animals to humans so that another pandemic can be prevented. It will probably be difficult to get answers.
The Chinese government, notoriously suspicious of outside scrutiny, has repeatedly prevented the team from arriving – and the investigation. Even in the best of circumstances, a thorough investigation can take months, if not more. The team must also navigate China’s attempts to politicize the investigation.
Here’s what you should know about the investigation.
China created obstacles and pushed for control.
Visa delays. Quarantine rules. Political impediment.
Apparently concerned with drawing renewed attention to the country’s initial mistakes in dealing with the pandemic, Chinese officials used a variety of tactics last year to prevent the WHO investigation.
After resisting demands from other nations to allow independent researchers to study the origin of the pathogen in its soil, China finally allowed two WHO experts to visit in July to lay the groundwork. Then he promptly quarantined the team for 14 days, forcing its members to be part of their detective work from a distance.
They were not allowed to visit Wuhan, where the virus first appeared.
For months, China was slow to approve the visit of a full team of experts, frustrating the leaders of the health agency. When the visit appeared to have ended earlier this month, it collapsed at the last minute when Beijing did not provide visas for visitors, according to the health agency. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, gave Beijing a rare censure at a news conference, saying he was “very disappointed” by the delays.
The Chinese government has demanded that Chinese scientists oversee important parts of the investigation. It limited the global health agency’s access to important research and data. The entire WHO team is expected to undergo two weeks of quarantine in Wuhan before starting the investigation.
Critics say Beijing’s desire for control means that the investigation is likely to be more political than scientific.
“You want this investigation to be complete, not subject to politicization, independent and transparent,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior global health researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But we have to be realistic.”
Despite the problems, WHO says it intends to carry out a rigorous and transparent study.
“WHO is committed to investigating the origins of the virus from the beginning,” said Tarik Jašarević, an agency spokesman, in a statement. “We ask all countries to support these efforts, demonstrating openness and transparency.”
Tracking the virus will be an arduous task.
The team that arrived in Wuhan, according to the official broadcaster CGTN, will face a city radically transformed since the virus appeared in late 2019. The city that went into blockade on January 23 last year and became a symbol of the virus devastation was considered by Chinese authorities a year later as a success story in eliminating the virus – a reborn city.
WHO experts have decades of experience investigating the depths of viruses, animal health and disease control. They come from Britain, Germany, Japan, Russia, the United States and other countries. British disease ecologist Peter Daszak and Hung Nguyen, a Vietnamese scientist who studies zoonotic diseases, are among the team members.
But tracking the origin of the virus that has killed nearly two million people worldwide and infected more than 92 million by Thursday will be hard work. Although experts believe that the virus originated naturally in animals, possibly in bats, little else is known.
The team is expected to examine the first reported cases of the virus in China, probably by examining data from samples collected in a large wet market in Wuhan that sold game meat and live animals. Many of the first reported infections were found there.
The access the team will have in China will be critical, say public health experts.
They should be able to review all data collected by the China Disease Control Center on the outbreak, “including contact tracking, environmental sampling, genetic sequences and patient identification zero,” said Raina MacIntyre, head of the biosafety program for the outbreak. Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. “It is important to do this in a comprehensive and transparent way.”
The health agency did not say how long the investigation would take, nor did it issue a detailed roadmap for the team’s visit.
Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist on the WHO team, said the investigation was a “long-term project”.
“We will gather all the scientific information that has already been collected by our colleagues in China and discuss, ‘What does that tell us?'”, She said in a recent interview with CGTN, the Chinese international broadcaster. “Is there information that we would like to add? How could this be done? “
The team will have to circumvent attempts to politicize its investigation.
The pandemic has damaged China’s reputation, with many foreign governments still angry that Beijing did not do more to contain the crisis in its early stages. Thus, Chinese propagandists are trying to use the WHO investigation to help strengthen China’s image and portray the country as a mature superpower.
“China is open, frank and sincere,” said the official Xinhua news agency, in a comment on Wednesday about the investigation.
WHO itself was also attacked by the Trump administration for appearing to yield to China’s will, even when the United States faced criticism for its ineffective response to the pandemic. Before the team landed, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Twitter on Tuesday: “@WHO was corrupted by China’s influence and bought cheap. WHO investigators are still unable to access Wuhan – a year after the first cases were reported? “
That same day, Global Times, a state tabloid, wrote that the pending visit showed that China “has always been dedicated to making its contribution to the global fight against the pandemic with a transparent, responsible attitude and a spirit of respect for Science.”
The Chinese government tried to push unsubstantiated theories that the virus emerged outside of China. Chinese scientists have suggested, without evidence, that packaged foods from abroad may have brought the virus to China or that the pandemic could have started in India.
The heated political climate will make it difficult for WHO to conduct an independent investigation, experts say.
“The biggest concern here is that the source of the outbreak has been so politicized,” said Huang, the global health expert. “This has really narrowed the space for WHO to have an independent, objective and scientific investigation.”
Albee Zhang and Claire Fu contributed to the research.