WUHAN, China (Reuters) – The Huanan Sea products market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which many were behind the COVID-19 pandemic, is sealed behind a blue perimeter fence.A giant team of security workers is chasing anyone left behind..
“We’re just doing our job,” said a black guard who ordered a Reuters reporter to erase the recorded photographs near the main market gates.He knew himself as an employee of the city government’s equipment and epidemic prevention.
Foreign hounds have been invited on an official excursion to report on Wuhan’s efforts to rebuild its economy after the months-long trauma of COVID-19. The official message: the “heroic city” returns and resumes its activities, its schools and hiking sites reopened and its businesses running at full speed.
“No other position is like this,” said Lin Songtian, president of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, a state-backed organization that helped organize the tour.
The site of more than 80% of COVID-19 deaths in the country, China’s central city on the banks of the Yangtze River has reported no cases of local transmission since April, and strict maximum controls imposed on a two-month blockade have eased.
But Wuhan has been accused of acting too slowly in the early stages of the epidemic, for fear of an interruption of the economy or displeasing Chinese leaders in Beijing.Critics say media censorship and whistleblower silence have given the virus more time to go unnoticed.
Wuhan remains reluctant to speak gently about the origins of a pathogen that has killed nearly 900,000 people worldwide.
The city still restricts access to positions such as the Huanan market, which connected with the first known infection organization in December.
In some other wholesale market at the northern end of the city, which is open to the public, Reuters continued through the workers’ security corps and was discouraged from talking to traders and traders.
“If you don’t let others stop in those places, it makes others feel like you have something to hide,” said Yanzhong Huang, senior investigator at the Foreign Affairs Council in Washington, who studies the policy of physical fitness disorders in China.
China rejects the conspiracy theories surrounding the coronavirus and adds accusations without evidence that a Wuhan-specialized virology institute manufactured it, but many unanswered questions remain about the origins of COVID-19 and the role of the exotic industry in Wuhan.
Although the government closed the Huanan market in January, there is a developing clinical consensus that the virus is not local to Huanan.Some studies recommend that it is already in flux during the time it reached the market, with more than one transmission route.
“I agree with the general concept that the virus jumped humans before Wuhan Market,” said David Irwin, professor of medicine and pathology at the University of Toronto.”Possibly it would have been a trader who had been directly exposed to the virus.in a host animal or who has interacted with farmers or other outdoor investors in Wuhan.”
China has shown little appetite for foreign research on the origins of COVID-19 or to allow a deeper examination of its efforts in the early stages of the epidemic, which prefer the country’s immediate economic and mental recovery.
“There is no doubt that China has been very successful in containing the virus, so why can’t they be more open?” said Huang.”If you need to dispel those myths, Array … you don’t have to worry about market visitors or even the antivirus institute.”
Reporting through David Stanway; Edited through William Mallard
All quotes were delayed for at least 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of operations and delays.
© 2020 Reuters. All rights are reserved.