five years later after the outbreak of the pandemic that put the planet in check, the origin of covid remains a mystery: The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to demand more information from China, while Beijing assures that it has provided all the data it has.
In the city of Wuhan, home to more than 11 million peoplelife has long since resumed its course, although for many the covid is still a bad drink difficult to forget. The first cases were reported therein December 2019, and in January a confinement of more than two months was imposed for stop the rise in infections of a virus that ended up leaving, according to the WHO, almost 800 million infections in the world and 7 million deaths.
“We’re glad to be back to normal, but It is good to remember it because many of us do not want to forget as if nothing had happened”a resident, Chu Jing, tells EFE.
Another Wuhanese, Liu Xuanremember the uncertainty of those first days of confinement, with the streets completely empty and the number of infections and deaths increasing: “Was hard to find a bed in a hospital or get food, because even if you could go out there was practically nothing in the supermarkets.
“At first it was all rumors and people didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know if we were infected and there was no way to know. The city was confined from one day to the next“People should have known in more detail what was happening to be able to take action.”he comments.
These were the first stages of a health crisis of still uncertain origin: last December the WHO He once again asked Beijing for transparency on the genetic sequence of the first cases in the Huanan market in Wuhan and the work carried out in the city’s laboratories.
According to the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, without complete data “all hypotheses are up in the air”, including the theory that the coronavirus accidentally escaped from a biosafety laboratory, which according to the agency’s scientists who visited China was the least likely of the hypotheses, but not ruled out.
Huanan market sealed
Today, the market Huanan remains completely sealed and jealously guarded by security guards. The two warehouses that made up it, separated by a street, remain closed five years later.
In January 2020, shortly after the first cases of what was then called “mysterious pneumonia outbreak”the market lowered the blind after detecting the spread of infections in sellers and customers.
Just a day before, the Chinese Government had informed the WHO detection in Wuhan of the first cases, but by then the coronavirus was already being transmitted at full speed.
For months, researchers completely clad in white protective equipment were the only ones authorized to enter the facility to disinfect it and collect samples.
In Huanan already There is no trace of them or of merchants or clients that once filled an open-air market where you could buy from fruits and vegetables to fresh meat, seafood, herbs and spices.
Only nearby establishments remain active, such as a large gallery that houses a hundred opticians.
No clues five years later
At the time, even the local press published that even pheasants and snakes were sold in the market and scientists suspected that certain bats native to southern China or the pangolin could have caused the transmission.
Meanwhile, other voices They did not rule out that the pathogen escaped from a laboratory, hypothesis that still causes outrage in Beijing.
According to the WHO, China needs to share the genetic and molecular results it kept about the animal market: “The virus has not been identified in animals or animal samples from the market, nor have we found animals that have infected humans”indicated last year the technical manager of the fight against the pandemic at the WHO, Maria Van Kherkove.
He believes that more studies are needed follow the trail of the animal which may have acted as a go-between and answers questions such as where the animals came from.
“We also asked, with no response, for serological tests from people who worked in the market or on the farms from which the animals came”he indicates.
China defends that it has “actively supported global research” about the coronavirus, and that the experts the WHO sent “went everywhere they wanted to go.”
“They met all the people they wanted to meet and saw all the materials they wanted to see”Spokesperson Mao Ning of the Asian country’s Foreign Ministry recently concluded.
