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The World Health Organization has called on China to fully release crucial data surrounding the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan in 2020, although the call was dismissed by Beijing.
Five years ago, on Dec. 31, 2019, WHO’s Country Office in China picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission on cases of “viral pneumonia” in Wuhan, China, the World Health Organization, or WHO, said in a statement commemorating the start of the pandemic.
“In the weeks, months and years that unfolded after that, COVID-19 came to shape our lives and our world,” the United Nations health body said. “We continue to call on China to share data and access so we can understand the origins of COVID-19. This is a moral and scientific imperative.”
The statement came after the World Health Organization (WHO) urged China to release key COVID-19 origin data from Wuhan.
It added: “Let’s take a moment to honor the lives changed and lost, recognize those who are suffering from COVID-19 and long COVID, express gratitude to the health workers who sacrificed so much to care for us.”
China on Tuesday dismissed calls on its government to release more data from the emergence of the pandemic, which has killed at least 7 million people worldwide, and defended its record on international collaboration.
Peter Daszak, a member of the World Health Organization team investigating the origins of COVID-19, takes a swab sample on the balcony of a hotel in Wuhan, China, Feb. 6, 2021.(Hector Retamal/AFP)
“After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago, China immediately shared epidemic information and virus gene sequences with the World Health Organization and the international community,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular news briefing in Beijing on Tuesday.
“On the issue of COVID-19 origin tracing, China has always adhered to the spirit of science, openness and transparency, actively supported and participated in global scientific tracing, and resolutely opposed any form of political manipulation,” Mao said, quoting WHO experts as saying that they were satisfied with the access granted during their February 2021 visit.
Early days of COVID-19 pandemic
When reports first began to emerge of a “mystery virus” causing pneumonia in patients in Wuhan, China said it definitely wasn’t SARS, but later said it was a SARS-like virus.
Ho Pak-leung, head of the University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Infection, warned in early January 2020 that that it was highly possible that the disease was spreading from human to human, given the sheer number of cases that appeared in a short period of time.
Human-to-human transmission was confirmed by the WHO on Jan. 19, 2020.
The WHO also continued to advise that the disease was spread through “respiratory droplets and contact” rather than traveling through the air like smoke. This led governments and health services around the world to emphasize hand-washing and social distancing over other preventive measures.
But a WHO team sent to Wuhan to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic in February 2021 sent out mixed signals regarding the transparency of the probe. Investigators said China refused to hand over raw patient data on early COVID-19 cases, making it harder to figure out how the outbreak began.
Whistleblowing doctors like Li Wenliang died of COVID-19 in the early phase of the pandemic, while those who survived were later silenced by intense political pressure.
Citizen journalists who went to Wuhan to document the early weeks of the outbreak and the citywide lockdown that followed were eventually caught, detained and sentenced to lengthy jail terms. Even after their release, some continue to face restriction and harassment.
Medical workers attend to COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Wuhan, China, Feb. 6, 2020.(China Daily via Reuters)
Rights groups said many Chinese people who spoke out against the government’s handling of the initial outbreak that eventually spread around the world had been prevented from getting anywhere near the team.
Competing theories of origin
Experts hired by the global health body to carry out a politically sensitive investigation of the origins of the pandemic had initially said that a leak from the lab was “extremely unlikely.” But WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus later said the lab leak theory warranted further investigation, as experts from 13 countries criticized a lack of transparency from China.
The U.S. intelligence community remains divided over whether COVID-19 originated from a lab in Wuhan or from natural exposure to an infected animal, and is only sure it wasn’t a deliberate bioweapon, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the Senate in March 2023.
China has continued to insist that the virus originated from outside its borders, a claim reiterated by Mao on Tuesday.
“The international scientific community has more and more clues pointing to the global origin of the virus,” she said. “Origin tracing should also be based on a global perspective and carried out in multiple countries and regions.”
Better public health response still needed
Nearly five years since the first SARS-CoV-2 infections were reported, most countries have lifted public health and social measures and have moved to end their national COVID-19 emergencies, the WHO said on its official website.
The bio-containment level 4 laboratory, called P4 (left), is seen on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, Dec. 21, 2024.(Hector Retamal/AFP)
“COVID-19 continues to circulate widely, however, presenting significant challenges to health systems worldwide,” it said, adding that “tens of thousands” of people are infected or re-infected with SARS-CoV-2 each week around the world.
It called on governments to “sustain the public health response to COVID-19 amid ongoing illness and death and the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants.”
According to the National Institutes of Health’s LitCovid website, which compiles COVID-19 research from around the world, Long COVID and sequelae — new health problems like neurological and cardiovascular disease that are caused by the virus — are among the most heavily researched and trending topics among scientists.
Papers on the virus’ links to neurodegeneration, chronic fatigue and mitochondrial damage topped the list of trending topics out of more than 440,000 articles from 8,000 scientific journals on the website on Dec. 31, 2024.
Edited by Roseanne Gerin.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Luisetta Mudie.
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China’s Communist Party is stepping up the use of big data to predict people’s behavior in a bid to identify “social risks” and prevent violent attacks on members of the public in the wake of the car killings in Zhuhai earlier this month.
“We should … deeply tap into the rich seams of political and legal data, strengthen data identification, screening, analysis and evaluation, and find ways to capture and identify risks and hidden dangers,” party law enforcement czar Ting Bai told officials on a recent inspection tour in the eastern province of Zhejiang, according to official reports.
Citing President Xi Jinping’s instructions to officials in the wake of the Nov. 11 fatal vehicle attack that left 35 dead in Zhuhai, Ting said the authorities should start responding to potential threats with preventive action “in a graded and classified manner.”
“[We must] improve our ability to make accurate predictions, precise warnings, and precise preventive measures,” he said in comments reported by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, China’s state prosecutor.
China is reeling in the wake of a number of attacks on members of the public in recent weeks, including a fatal car attack at a stadium in the southern port city of Zhuhai this month that left 35 people dead and dozens more injured.
Since then, further violence has been making the headlines, including a fatal college stabbing and a car attack on students at a primary school in Hunan province.
Authorities in southern China are already sending local officials and volunteers to intervene in people’s marital troubles and to mediate disputes between neighbors in the wake of the fatal car ramming in the grounds of a Zhuhai sports stadium by a 62-year-old man surnamed Fan who was reportedly angered over a divorce settlement.
Analyzing big data
Now, local officials are being encouraged to set up systems that analyse huge amounts of big data to warn them of potential social tensions and disgruntlement, so they can try to intervene before such crimes are committed.
Local governments are expected to build “comprehensive governance centers,” Ting said.
A man breaks a car’s window following a vehicle collision outside a primary school in Changde, Hunan province, China. Nov. 11, 2024.
Public Security Minister Wang Xiaohong also told officials in the northeastern province of Liaoning last week that they should be using big data to help “proactively warn of risks.”
Kung Hsiang-sheng, associate researcher at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said such systems are extremely hard to implement in real life, however.
“Internet censors already filter and delete politically sensitive posts, but they have little ability to monitor happenings on the ground,” Kung said.
“The only way they would be able to prevent and detect such crimes is if the person announced they were planning to kill people in a school or on the street in advance, say in an online forum,” he said.
He said there is unlikely to be much prior warning of such crimes online.
“They can’t investigate anyone who sounds disgruntled on the internet,” Kung said. “It’s much harder to use technology to prevent crimes … that are carried out with no prior online warning.”
‘Dissatisfaction and unrest’
Chiang Ya-chyi, professor of law and politics at Taiwan’s Ocean University, said there is plenty of big data available these days in China, however.
“China uses big data to monitor people’s every word and move on the internet,” Chiang said. “But there are still limitations, even under comprehensive monitoring.”
“If they strengthen the analysis of big data, they’ll need to invest more in manpower,” she said. “Are they going to trace and prevent any possible flashpoints of dissatisfaction and unrest, one at a time?”
She said the main cause of dissatisfaction in China is the economic downturn and the lack of say ordinary people have in their own lives.
A man looks at people walking along a shopping centre in Wuhan, in China’s central Hubei province on Jan. 1, 2021.
She said social pressures would continue to build if the basic problem wasn’t addressed by the government.
Chinese dissident Gong Yujian, who now lives in Taiwan, agreed.
Gong said most people in China are “lying flat” and waiting out the economic downturn and increasingly autocratic governance under Xi Jinping, amid a major collapse of public confidence in the regime.
“When this confidence collapses, everyone from the lowest rungs to the middle class, outside the party and within the party, from intellectuals to entrepreneurs, ordinary civil servants to senior officials start to feel anxious, and see no hope for their personal future or their country’s,” Gong said.
“They leave, either by sneaking across the border or emigrating; those who can’t get out are forced to praise Xi Jinping,” he said. “Either that or they lie low, or even more extreme, they start hurting each other to demonstrate their loyalty.”
He said high-tech monitoring in the style of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, won’t address these issues.
“As for using high-tech methods to create a 1984 situation where there are no blind spots in society, China under Xi Jinping’s rule already has that, yet they’re still unable to prevent vicious incidents [like the Zhuhai attack].”
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Hsia Hsiao-hwa for RFA Mandarin.
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