One year after the coronavirus alarm, China seeks to change the origin of Covid

Nearly a year after doctors identified the first cases of a troubling new disease in Wuhan city, China appears to be running a campaign to question the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

State media have intensively reported on the coronavirus detected in the packaging of imported frozen food. The People's Daily claimed in a Facebook post last week that "all available evidence suggests that the coronavirus did not start in Wuhan, Central China."

A foreign ministry spokesman, when asked about state media reports that the virus originated outside China, said only that it was important to distinguish between the country where Covid-19 was first discovered and the country of origin. "Although China was the first to report cases, it does not necessarily mean that the virus originated in China," Zhao Lijian told a news conference. "Tracing the origin is an ongoing process that can involve many countries and regions."

Chinese scientists have even submitted a paper for publication in the Lancet - though it has not been reviewed by colleagues - claiming that "Wuhan is not the place where Sars-CoV-2 human-to-human transmission first occurred", suggesting that the infection the first may have been the "Indian subcontinent".

Offending. The Indian subcontinent is a vast area the size of Europe that includes countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Within the subcontinent, there is a wide variety of peoples, languages ??and religions. This area is known as South Asia.

Claims that the virus originated outside of China are given little credibility by Western scientists. Michael Ryan, director of the health emergency program at the World Health Organization (WHO), said last week that it would be "very speculative" to argue that the disease did not appear in China.

Covid reports circulating in Italy in the fall of 2019 look weak, said Prof Jonathan Stoye, a virologist at the Francis Crick? Institute in London. "Serological data [from Italy] are most likely to be explained by cross-reactive antibodies directed against other coronaviruses." In other words, the antibodies found in cases in Italy were caused in individuals who were infected with various coronaviruses, not those responsible for Covid-19. "What seems certain is that the first recorded cases of the disease were in China," Stoye added. "So it is very likely that the virus originated in China."

For traces of the coronavirus found in frozen food packaging, scientists think they pose a very low risk for a disease that is now believed to be transmitted through respiratory sprays.

Burimet: Guardian, People’s Daily