BEIJING: Chinese scientists’ research on tracing the origins of Covid-19 were carried out based on suggestions provided by the World Health Organization, said Shen Hongbing, director of the Chinese Center For Disease Control and Prevention.
He recalled that WHO and Chinese experts jointly traced the virus origins from January to February of 2021, visiting the seafood market in Wuhan – where the first Covid-19 cases were reported in China – and providing suggestions for the next step.
“Therefore, a series of followup research made by CDC scientists were conducted in accordance with the suggestions from the WHO’s tracing report,” he added.
The follow-up analysis results showed that DNA data in the environmental samples from the market could not provide any new clues to the origin of the virus, he said, adding that CDC experts summarized the findings into a scientific paper in February 2022.
The experts submitted the paper to the journal Nature, which formally published it.
When asked why it took over three years for China to make public the virus data collected in Wuhan in January 2020, he said: “Based on the WHO’s recommendations, Chinese scientists conducted further analysis, and the submission required a process.
“The preprint had been published and the subsequent data had also been publicly released, so we didn’t delay the release of the data, nor delayed them intentionally,” he added. — China Daily/ANN
