Beijing, Leading the World Around by Its COVID-Susceptible Nose

"[Chinese officials ... were] looking at what was on sale in the [Wuhan] market, whether all the vendors have licenses [and] if there was any illegal [wildlife] trade."

"[The probe was] not routine [and WHO would] try to figure out what happened."

Peter Ven Embarek, top virus expert, World Health Organization

AP Photo/Ng Han Guan   Peter Ben Embarek of the WHO saying farewell to Liang Wannian, at the end of their collaboration in investigating the origins of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China in 2021.

An Associated Press investigation has concluded that the Beijing government took definite steps to freeze any enquiries of substance to trace origins of the coronavirus pandemic. In public China consistently spoke of its support of an open scientific inquiry. Thousands of pages of undisclosed emails and documents, leaked recordings, and dozens of interviews were perused throughout the period of the investigation revealing that the information freeze was initiated earlier than presumed -- in fact, in the first weeks of the outbreak, involving political and scientific infighting in China, along with international finger-pointing.

 

Bureaucrats in Wuhan attempting to avoid blame hindered critical initial efforts, misleading the central government which in turn silenced Chinese scientists, later subjecting visiting UN officials to tours that were stage-managed to ensure that nothing would be 'discovered' that China had no intention of revealing to the world at large. As to the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, it was to have remained unknown, given the clouds of secrecy surrounding the topic. Unclear as well is the date of the first searches by Chinese authorities for the origins of the virus.

December 31, 2019 was the date that Chinese Center for Disease Control scientists visited the Wuhan market, according to Beijing, where most early COVID-19 cases first surfaced. Yet WHO officials had knowledge of an inspection on December 25, 2019, reflected in a recording of a confidential WHO meeting. During the course of the AP investigation WHO stated it was "not aware" of  any December 25 investigation while other experts opined that any visit to the market on that day would be significant if animal samples were taken, viewed as crucial evidence of COVID-19's leap to infect humans.

Early in the emerging pandemic, yet confined to China, politicians took command to silence Chinese scientists. In early 2020, while the WHO negotiated for a mission to investigate COVID-19, China's Foreign Ministry decided the terms. A visa for Embarek, the WHO's leading virus expert was refused, and all items linked to an origins search were dropped from the itinerary. Liang Wannian, an epidemiologist with close links to elite Chinese officials was given charge of the WHO visit.

People interviewed but unnamed testified that the party line was dominant, science-backed policies taking a back seat, by political decree. Liang ordered that the Wuhan market was to be disinfected before the collection of samples proceeded, promoting at the same time the implausible theory that frozen food imported into China originated COVID-19. Liang lobbied WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to praise China's helpful and responsible response to the viral outbreak.

At the time the WHO led another visit in January 2021 to Wuhan, the hunt for an origin had been highly politicized, with Liang organizing Market workers to inform WHO experts that no live wildlife had been sold at the Wuhan Market, and simultaneously recent photographs of wildlife for sale at the Market were excised from the report. 

AP Photo/Ng Han Guan    Farewell event of medical workers who arrived from outside Wuhan to help the city during the coronavirus outbreak.