Public health experts weigh in on the prospect of the COVID19 probe in Wuhan
As experts from the World Health Organization continue to investigate the origin of the coronavirus in Wuhan, public health experts think the most important goal of the probe is to help the international community learn how to deal with similar outbreaks in the future. However, they are not optimistic about whether the WHO experts can find key evidence about the coronavirus in two weeks.
Over the last few weeks, the international community has been focusing on the WHO’s mission to investigate the origin of coronavirus in Wuhan. Even though the team of WHO experts arrived in China late last month and they were able to visit hospitals, seafood market and the center of disease control over the last few days, the world remains largely suspicious about whether they can obtain key information about the origin of coronavirus or not.
Jason Wang, the director of the center for policy, outcomes and prevention at Stanford University, said since it’s been a year after the coronavirus outbreak began at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, the animal that might have served as the intermediary host of the coronavirus may no longer be there, making it hard for international experts to have some knowledge about what kind of animal it might be.
“Since the WHO experts won’t be going around Wuhan to collect evidence, my understanding is that the Chinese government will provide evidence for them to review,” Wang said.
To him, there should be three main goals for the WHO-led investigation in Wuhan. He points out that understanding the origin of coronavirus will give the international community a lot of insights about how to prevent similar outbreaks in the future.
Additionally, the investigation is also a chance for the WHO and the international community to understand China’s pandemic reporting process. “There could be structural issue in the pandemic reporting process and the investigation will allow us to understand how to respond in the future,” said Wang.
Lastly, Wang thinks it’s important for the WHO to understand China’s chain of command amid a pandemic, as its reaction during the coronavirus outbreak shows that Beijing is slow in reporting the pandemic but quick at taking actions. “Once China realized this is a serious outbreak, they could prevent the virus from transmitting from one city to another,” Wang explained.
Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, thinks the international community should view the investigation in Wuhan as information-sharing and communication between WHO experts and their Chinese counterparts, since China has obtained a lot of the information.
“There is a lot the Chinese government can offer in terms of clues that would help the international community better understand the mystery surrounding the origins of the coronavirus outbreak,” Huang said. “It includes how much the Chinese scientists know, what kind of research they have conducted, and whether they have conducted similar studies about the animal origins of the outbreak.”
Does WHO experts have enough time to investigate?
However, Huang also points out that if the WHO experts want to find conclusive results regarding how coronavirus jumped from animals to human beings, then he thinks two weeks aren’t enough for them to achieve that goal.
“A lot of the information can be shared virtually, but the importance of the two-week visit is for the WHO experts to visit the sites, including the Huanan Seafood Market, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the labs at the Wuhan Center of Disease Control,” Huang said.
Jason Wang from Stanford University thinks the key factor that will determine the outcome of the WHO-led investigation is how much access will China give the experts while they are in Wuhan. “While two weeks is a bit too short for an investigation, access is very important,” Wang explained.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, many countries including the United States have accused the WHO of allowing politics to come before pandemic prevention, but the WHO has also denied these accusations on several occasions. Over the last few months, countries have pressured the WHO to begin the investigation in China.
Huang thinks that when countries begin to politicize the origin of the pandemic, then it will be hard for the international community to expect the country of origin to be fully cooperative during the investigation.
“When the international community politicizes a scientific investigation, it’s going to poison the atmosphere of the investigation and make it difficult for China to be cooperative in the investigation,” Huang said.
Who should be responsible for the pandemic?
As countries try to determine which country or organization should be responsible for causing the global pandemic, Huang points out that maybe if the WHO had been more perseverant at pressing China to provide more information about the virus in the early stage of the outbreak, they might be able to warn the world a bit earlier when the pandemic first began. However, Huang thinks another reason that caused coronavirus to be transmitted around the world was how countries responded to the WHO’s alert.
“Even if the WHO had alerted countries about the human-to-human transmission before January 14, 2020, that probably would still not fundamentally change the outcome given how western countries respond to the pandemic,” Huang said.
Huang thinks that following the challenges that come with the coronavirus pandemic, the international community should seek to strengthen the WHO by making it respond to international public health crises more effectively. “The WHO needs to be given the authority and autonomy to make decisions,” Huang said. “They need to have access to the center of outbreaks in the future and they need to be able to enforce international health regulations more easily.”
The piece was first published in Mandarin on DW’s Chinese website.
