A team of 27 advisers, called SAGO, calls for more data on tests in Wuhan laboratories and information on blood samples collected in 2019
Two and a half years after the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan, the same questions about its origin remain unanswered: where did this new coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, arise, when and how? The lack of conclusions from the international team that visited Wuhan between January and February of last year led the World Health Organization (WHO) to create another group of experts to advise them on their research and establish prevention guidelines to prevent new pandemics.
Formed by 27 specialists from around the world, and called in English SAGO (Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathongens), this committee has just published its first report and only makes one thing clear: that more information is needed from China. . “The source of SARS-CoV-2 and its introduction to the (Huanan) market is unclear and it is yet to be determined where the first contagion occurred. There is a need to examine environmental samples collected from specific stalls and market pipes in January 2020 that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in areas known to sell live animals,” the report asks. Specifically, the experts demand a review of the 923 samples of surfaces taken in the market, of which 73 were positive, and of the 18 animal species analyzed, which were negative. But, among them, those of red foxes or raccoons do not appear, animals that were sold in the market and can carry SARS-CoV-2.
Although the Chinese authorities assure that 80,000 animal samples collected throughout the country were negative, the report clarifies that they did not specify the names or the number of said species. In his opinion, the Huanan market, where some of the first cases were detected, “may be the source of an amplification” of the virus, rather than its origin, since its genetic analysis showed certain mutations with other initial cases.
The laboratory hypothesis, which the experts who traveled to Wuhan considered “extremely unlikely”, is not ruled out in this new report. Although its members do not have new data, among other things because China has not given it to them, the team considers it “important” to continue investigating. With the objection of three experts, from China, Russia and Brazil, the SAGO report highlights that “it would be necessary to access and review the evidence of all laboratory activities (both ‘in vitro’ and in vivo) with coronaviruses related to SARS- CoV-2 or its close relatives.
As genetic experiments with SARS and other related coronaviruses were carried out in Wuhan laboratories, experts call for further investigation of their staff to “determine if there was an accident (…) that resulted in a leak or infection of their workers before December 2019, when the first cases were detected in China. This recommendation is valid for other places in the world where traces of the coronavirus have been detected supposedly prior to the outbreak of Wuhan. But the SAGO report stresses that these findings are “unclear” because their study methods need to be validated and verified.
Instead, it does demand more information from China about the 76,000 suspected cases of covid detected in Wuhan in the months prior to the outbreak. Although all of them were ruled out by the Beijing regime and there were only 92 clinically compatible cases, experts recommend expanding the criteria, which were very rigid, in case mild or asymptomatic cases escaped. The reason is that since the third week of November 2019 there was “an unexplained increase in flu-like illnesses” in Wuhan, of which WHO experts want to know more details. But, according to epidemiological surveillance data presented by Chinese doctors, “there is no clear evidence of a wide circulation of SARS-CoV-2 before its recognized onset in December 2019.”
Once again, the lack of information from China weighs down the WHO investigation, which has not yet had access to its raw data. For now, Beijing has delivered studies on environmental and animal samples, a serological survey of its 2019 blood samples and the role of frozen food in the introduction of SARS-CoV-2, which is its theory about the origin of the coronavirus. . But the director-general of the WHO himself, Dr. Tedros, personally wrote in February to the Prime Minister, Li Keqiang, and to the Minister of Health, Ma Xiaowei, requesting information on the first cases, tests on workers from farms supplying the Huanan market and the blood samples stored in Wuhan. According to the data provided by China, the only thing that is known is that the closest relative to the virus that has unleashed the pandemic is in a bat from Laos found this year (Banal-52, with 96.8% genetic similarity ) and the one discovered in 2013 in a cave in southwestern China (RaTG13, with 96.1%). But both are far from being the origins of covid.
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