China’s top national health body says, transmission of corona virus to humans confirmed on January 19
Beijing: An official document on Sunday revealed for the first time that researchers from a high-level expert team organized by China’s top national health body confirmed that the coronavirus was transmissible among humans at midnight on January 19, just hours before they notified the public, and less than a month before the experts were alerted by the newly-discovered disease.
According to the document released by China’s State Council Information Office on Sunday, experts dispatched by China’s National Health Commission (NHC) to Wuhan at the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak confirmed the novel coronavirus could be transmitted between humans on January 19, one day before the commission held a press conference for the team headed by Zhong Nanshan, China’s leading respiratory disease specialist, who made the information public on the team’s behalf.
Delaying the release of crucial facts about the virus has been used as ammunition for the foreign media’s attacks against China, accusing the nation of “covering up” key facts regarding the epidemic at its early stages.
Before January 19, there wasn’t sufficient evidence to indicate that the virus could be transmitted by humans; to make sure that the virus had such qualities, researchers need to find out a clear transmission chain between humans; and another clear sign is the infection of medical staff, said Wang Guangfa, a leading Chinese respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital in Beijing, who was also among the first group of experts dispatched by the NHC to Wuhan in early January.
Wang said that when they landed in Wuhan in early January, they found the number of fever patients soared during that time, and also found patients who had no direct exposure to the Huanan wet market, a place initially believed to have reported the virus first. “But the evidence was not sufficient.” He said that it had to be left to science to decide whether the virus is capable of human-to-human transmission, as any abrupt decision will cause unimaginable consequences.
