The documentary airs on BBC 2 on Tuesday. While those on the team have stressed it is not about apportioning blame, there are already concerns about whether China will give them the access required, amid a concerted effort by Beijing to rewrite the narrative of the virus’s origins. Now, Chinese authorities are battling the country’s worst outbreak since early 2020, albeit in far smaller numbers, and a mission of WHO scientists is in Wuhan, completing quarantine before it can start long-awaited investigation into the origins of the virus. The following day, WHO officials again praised China’s response. We need to see the data, we need to be able to determine for ourselves the geographic distribution, the timeline, all of that,” WHO’s emergencies head Michael Ryan said at one early January meeting. “ there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission is not good enough. Leaked audio from inside WHO meetings – obtained by the Associated Press and shared with the BBC and PBS Frontline – revealed WHO officials discussing the similarity of the situation with the Sars outbreak and “endlessly trying to get updates from China”, and the danger of “finger pointing” if something were to happen. The BBC documentary also examined the response of the WHO, which continued to publicly stand by China’s assurances that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission even while experts internally believed otherwise and were briefing world leaders to prepare. “The country has an obligation to answer WHO’s questions honestly fully and transparently and I don’t think that happened entirely,” said Gostin. Professor Laurence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization (WHO) collaborating centre on health law at Georgetown university, said China’s failure to report the existence of the virus was a violation of international health regulations, and mirrored the cover-up conducted during the 2003 Sars epidemic. We need to learn the lessons so that this doesn’t happen again.”Ĭhina has insisted it quickly released all relevant information and has denied all accusations of a cover-up. “I believe the true history needs to be remembered. There was nothing we could do, the medical resources were just too tight at that time,” said the doctor. “There were some patients who didn’t need to die. Gao, who declined to be interviewed, has told state media sequences were released as quickly as possible and that he never said there was no human-to-human transmission.īy the time Wuhan went into lockdown on 23 January, the Wuhan central hospital was receiving 2,500 cases a day.
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“He should have released some sequences and said this is what we know.” Lipkin said Gao told him they had identified the virus and it was not highly transmissible. Authorities were also accused of preventing the release of genomic sequencing results for several days, until professor Zhang Yongzhen published his online, against strict orders.Īmerican virologist Ian Lipkin told the BBC he was contacted by the head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), George Gao, around the new year, as rumours of the virus began to circulate. Previous reporting has revealed Beijing’s leadership was aware of a likely pandemic for at least six days while telling the public it was low risk, before it eventually warned of human-to-human transmission on 20 January.
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Just 41 cases had been officially reported by that time. The doctor said within weeks there were hundreds or thousands of suspected cases but they had no means of confirming or reporting a diagnosis within the hospital structure.
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So why say there was none? This made us very confused and very angry.” “Everyone knew it was human-to-human transmission, even a fool would know. “It was out of control, we started to panic,” he said.īut hospital authorities banned them from speaking to anyone, and wouldn’t allow them to wear masks, he said.
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The hospital’s respiratory department was full by 10 January, the unnamed doctor told the BBC for its programme, 54 Days.