China health expert defends delay in confirming Covid's threat

A worker in a protective suit is seen at the closed seafood market in Wuhan, Hubei province, China in this file photo from Jan 10, 2020. - Reuters

BEIJING (Bloomberg): One of China's top scientists defended the country's delays in raising a global alarm in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, saying officials were initially unsure whether the pathogen was infectious among humans because close contacts of the first patients didn't appear to fall sick.

In the first days of 2020, after the mysterious pneumonia cluster emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, Chinese experts quarantined 700 close contacts of the first patients -- including 400 medical workers that tended to them -- but none showed signs of illness.