WHO team having 'productive talks' in China about Covid's origins

(210128) -- WUHAN, Jan. 28, 2021 (Xinhua) -- Gao Li arrives at Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Jan. 28, 2021. On the first day of the Spring Festival travel rush in 2021, Gao Li, a "post-90s" migrant worker in Shanghai, packed up his luggage and set foot on his way back to his hometown of Huangpi, Wuhan of central China for the Spring Festival. Before checking in, he fumbled for the negative nucleic acid testing report in his bag. Nothing could be more important than this piece of "luggage". Two days ago, Shanghai medical workers came to Gao Li's working site and conducted nucleic acid testing on more than 100 workers who planned to return home. On Jan. 27, they got their important "pass". At 7:55 this morning, train G598 left Shanghai Hongqiao Station on time. Gao stared out of the window, eager to return home. The train sped along. Gao could not wait to see his loved ones he hadn't seen for a long time. In fact, long absence is not only relatives, but also a taste of the New Year. "For us Wuhan people, there are a lot of emotions that have been stored up and we need to express them in this reunion moment," said Gao Li. Gao is an installation worker of the China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Co., Ltd. After the outbreak of the Wuhan epidemic last year, he went to Wuhan with his father Gao Yongxiang and relatives from his hometown to become the first group of builders of Wuhan Leishenshan Hospital, which was swiftly built for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. On this trip home, Gao received one nucleic acid testing, two times of whole-body disinfections, three health QR code checks and four body temperature tests. When arriving at the village committee of Shuikousi Village, local village officials checked his negative nucleic acid testing report and distributed him with epidemic prevention notices and anti-epidemic supplies. According to the relevant policies, Gao does not need any form of isolation, and

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01/02/2021 | 17:04 PM

Thomson Reuters

A World Health Organization team visiting China to explore the origins of the coronavirus is having productive talks with its Chinese counterparts, Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead for Covid-19, said on Monday.

“They are having very productive discussions with Chinese counterparts, visiting different hospitals ... a very good visit to a marketplace,” she told a virtual briefing in Geneva.

The WHO investigators arrived in the Hubei provincial capital, Wuhan, last month to look for clues and have visited hospitals that treated many of the earliest patients and a seafood market where cases of infection with the then-unknown virus emerged in December 2019.

The team’s visit to the Hubei Provincial Centre for Disease Control came amid tight Chinese controls on access to information about the virus.

China has sought to avoid blame for alleged mis-steps in its early response to the outbreak, while promoting alternative theories that the virus originated elsewhere and may even have been brought to Wuhan from outside the country.