Five years after the confinement that marked the beginning of the Covid-19 Pandemia, the origin of the Sars-Cov-2 virus remains an enigma. The World Health Organization (WHO) insists on requesting China greater transparency, while the Chinese government claims to have provided all the information available.
In Wuhan, a city of more than 11 million inhabitants where the first cases were notified in December 2019, life has recovered its usual course. However, the memory of the hard days of confinement and the initial uncertainty is still alive in the memory of its residents.
“We are glad to have returned to normal, but we cannot forget what we live,” says Chu Jing, a citizen of Wuhan. Another resident, Liu Xuan, recalls the chaos of the first days of closing, with empty streets, food shortages and overflowing hospitals. “We didn’t know if we were infected or what to do. They were all rumors, ”he says.
The closure of the Huanan market, an initial epicenter of the contagios, remains in force five years later, with its sealed and monitored facilities. In January 2020, shortly after the first cases of atypical pneumonia were identified, the market was closed, where fresh products and live animals were sold. Since then, the reopening of the enclosure has not been allowed.
According to WHO, genetic and molecular data of the first cases detected in the market and in Wuhan’s laboratories are still needed to understand how the virus arose. Although the most likely hypothesis remains a zoonotic transmission – of the animal to the human -, the possibility of an accidental escape from a laboratory has not been completely ruled out.
“The virus has not been identified in animals or samples collected in the market,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, technical head of WHO for pandemic. He also indicated the need to carry out more studies to track the possible animal intermediary and verify the conditions on the farms where the animals sold in Huanan came.
Tensions between WHO and China
The CEO of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reiterated in December that “all hypotheses are still on the table” while no more data are shared. For its part, China claims to have collaborated fully. “WHO experts visited all the places they wanted and met all the people who wanted to interview,” said Mao Ning, spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Despite these statements, the lack of advances in the identification of the origin of the virus keeps open questions about how a disease that has caused about 7 million deaths and 800 million infections, according to WHO figures, could emerge and spread so quickly.
Five years later, the mystery persists, and the world is still waiting for answers that allow closing one of the darkest chapters of recent history.
EFE source.
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