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. .
“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’s epidemic prevention and equipment.
Foreign hounds were invited on an official tour to report on Wuhan’s efforts to rebuild its economy after the months trauma of COVID-19. The official message: the “heroic city” is returning and resumes its activities, schools and hiking sites. reopened and their businesses are 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 location 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 May, 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.
Wuhan remains reluctant to allow the origins of a pathogen that has killed nearly 900,000 people worldwide to be manipulated.
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 tracked the workers’ security corps and was discouraged from talking to traders and traders.
“If you don’t let others stop in those places, you give others the impression that you have something to hide,” said Yanzhong Huang, principal investigator at the Foreign Relations Council in Washington, D. C. , who studies politics. Fitness problems in China.
origins
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 played through 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 you are already in flux during the time you entered the market, with more than one transmission route.
“I agree with the general concept that the virus jumped humans rather than the Wuhan market,” said David Irwin, professor of medicine and pathology at the University of Toronto. “Possibly it would have been a trader who exposed he he hem directly to the virus of hosting animals or interacting 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, who 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. “
(This story corrects paragraph five to say that the last local COVID-19 broadcast took place in May, April)
(Report via David Stanway; edited through William Mallard)
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