WHO still waiting on COVID origins data from China – DW – 12/31/2024
www.dw.com
Five years since COVID-19 first emerged in Wuhan, the UN health agency is calling on China to "share data and access so we can understand the origins" of the global pandemic.

Summary

The WHO reiterated calls for China to provide data on COVID-19 origins, five years after the virus emerged in Wuhan.

The lack of transparency has hindered understanding of the pandemic’s early stages. Initial theories pointed to animal-to-human transmission via Wuhan’s wet market, but speculation about a lab leak persists.

A 2021 WHO-China report deemed a lab leak “extremely unlikely,” though no firm conclusions were reached. China has rejected further investigations.

While most scientists favor natural origins, debate remains, complicating efforts to prevent future pandemics.

    • 𝚐𝚕𝚘𝚠𝚒𝚎@h4x0r.hostEnglish
      259·
      6 days ago

      If it were a nothing burger, why is China being apprehensive about releasing any data on its true origin? There was a literal lab working on coronaviruses in the specific location of patient zero. That doesn’t at all seem suspect in anyway? This isn’t even about dumb MAGAts, this is just asking basic questions that you weren’t allowed to ask and were silenced in doing so. Some narrative it came from someone eating an exotic animal from a wet market doesn’t add up. If it were that simple, just a zoonotic transmission, you’d think China would give confirmation of that.

      • OutForARip@lemmy.caEnglish
        412·
        6 days ago

        Because face.

        It’s more preserving of one’s honour to pretend nothing ever happened.

        You cannot expect rationality from irrational actors.

      • The Octonaut@mander.xyzEnglish
        79·
        6 days ago

        Because it makes no sense. Covid has been detected in waste water in Italy from summer 2019. That’s not to say it originated in Italy but that connecting the Wuhan outbreak in December 2019 to a lab - or indeed a wetmarket - makes no sense.

          • The Octonaut@mander.xyzEnglish
            93·
            6 days ago

            Covid’s presence in Europe before Wuhan was known all the way back in June 2020: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/italy-sewage-study-suggests-covid-19-was-there-in-december-2019-idUSKBN23Q1J8/

            By November 2020 it was pushed back as far as September 2019: https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2020-11-17/COVID-19-was-spreading-in-Italy-by-September-2019-study-indicates-VuSqUttP8s/index.html

            Here’s a scientific source:

            Overall, the results of this blind retesting of a selected set of samples indicate the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in some SMILE samples collected in the prepandemic period. The oldest samples found positive for IgM by both laboratories were collected on 10 October 2019 (Lombardy), 11 November 2019 (Lombardy) and 5 February 2020 (Lazio), the latter with neutralizing antibodies. Two additional samples collected on 17 December 2019 (Campania) and 28 January 2020 (Lombardy) tested as IgG positive by VisMederi and positive for IgG S1 and IgG S1+NP by Erasmus. Additional IgM positive cases could have been detected also by Erasmus by lowering the cut-off of the commercial IgM assay. The older among these putative additional IgM positive samples was collected on 3 September 2019 in the Veneto region, one of the first and mostly severely affected COVID-19 regions.

            https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8778320/

            • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              91·
              6 days ago

              Same source says that it definitely came to Europe from China though, a few paragraphs lower:

              These findings do not at all suggest that the virus originated in Italy, but they endorse the idea that the virus was likely spreading in China before the first known cases and that could have been circulated by travelers given direct the connections between China and European and US countries, particularly the Northern West and East Italian regions, which are among the most industrialized and connected areas of Italy. Evidence used to support this hypothesis comes from a comparative genomic analysis of more than 175,000 genomes, which delineated 22 distinct SARS-CoV-2 haplogroups with a broad geographic distribution within China, pointing towards an early emergence and widespread cryptic circulation of the virus well before its isolation in January 2020 [25]. Recently, Kumar et al. reconstructed the mutational history of SARS-CoV-2 using a so called ‘mutation order approach’ (MOA) [26]. From their analysis of more than 174,000 genomes, major mutational fingerprints revealed that it is useful to identify and track the spatiotemporal evolution of novel coronavirus. The progenitor genome identified differed from that of the first coronaviruses sampled in China by three variants, implying that none of the earliest patients represents the index case or gave rise to all human infections. However, multiple coronavirus infections in China, the USA and Europe harbored the progenitor genetic fingerprint in January 2020 and later, suggesting that the progenitor was spreading worldwide months before.

              A recently published letter by Petti et al. summarizes existing evidence that corroborates the infectious disease epidemiology principle of pathogen circulation prior to the recognized outbreak [27]. The eventuality of an early SARS-CoV-2 circulation already relatively sustained in Europe and America is not so astonishing, as SARS-CoV-2 is mainly a respiratory pathogen. Therefore, a novel unknown respiratory virus responsible for severe pneumonia like SARS-CoV-2 could circulate undetected for months or years, be responsible for many deaths, and even become a pandemic, before peculiar characteristics of the disease are noticed that allow for its identification.

              Looks as if the original virus that definitely came from China caused less severe symptoms and was not detected, but still caused infections thus antibody findings.

              Did China do transparent peer-reviewed research into this?

              • The Octonaut@mander.xyzEnglish
                25·
                6 days ago

                I don’t know. But I don’t see how that’s relevant to Wuhan having a lab that studies coronaviruses if the pandemic didn’t start in Wuhan, which even now is still repeated as if it was truth by proper journalists and DW alike.

                • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyzEnglish
                  3·
                  6 days ago

                  The first confirmed cases were in Wuhan, and right now, the state of science is that started either in Wuhan or near Wuhan. It’s complicated science because where antibodies were found is still just one datapoint, a precursor can have the same molecular structure on the virus surface, so similar or exactly the same antibodies. Meaning since the discussed proCoV2 was only three base pairs away, it could be producing the same antibodies, be widespread, infect, even kill people, yet not be COVID-19.

                  The problem that the Chinese political system doesn’t promote open academic discussion - that the virus is political - doesn’t help either.

                  • The Octonaut@mander.xyzEnglish
                    23·
                    6 days ago

                    So your assertion is that we need to seriously consider that a ‘wild’ coronavirus with the same signature as Covid-19 evolved somewhere in China, spread to Italy and elsewhere in Europe and probably dozens of other untested places in the summer of 2019, and - coincidentally - Covid-19 itself mutated in bushmeat or was engineered in Wuhan in an unrelated zoonotic transmission or, uh, “biocrime”?

                    Which of us is stretching probabilities to breaking point for political purposes, ‘HK’?