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Chinese authorities were warned that coronavirus could spread between humans in early January, but did not tell the public for a week, a leading microbiologist has claimed, saying that there has been a “cover up”.
Professor Yuen Kwok-yung says he alerted health officials on January 12 to suspected human to human transmission of Covid-19, but his warnings were not made public until January 19, according to a new BBC Panorama documentary about China’s sluggish early response to the pandemic.
The professor, who helped to identify an outbreak of Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, diagnosed a family of seven with the novel coronavirus in Shenzhen, 700 miles from Wuhan, the global pandemic’s original epicentre.
Only some members of the family had been to Wuhan, which set alarm bells ringing about the infectious nature of the virus. Prof Yuen said he immediately informed Beijing.
The revelation contradicts China’s official version of events, where Beijing claims it made a public announcement about the human transmission as soon as it had clear evidence.
Public confirmation of human to human transmission of a mysterious SARS-like virus did not emerge from the Chinese health ministry until January 19, just as the country was entering its busiest annual travel period of the year, when millions board trains and planes for the Lunar New Year holidays.
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Prof Yuen told Panorama: “The local officials who were supposed to be immediately relaying the information had not allowed this to be done as rapidly as it should.
“I do suspect that they have been doing some cover-up locally at Wuhan,” he said.
“When we went to the Huanan Seafood Market, of course there is nothing to see because the market was clean already. So, you may say that the crime scene is already disturbed."
The World Health Organisation, which sent a delegation to Wuhan on January 20-21, issued a statement on January 22 saying "human to human transmission is taking place in Wuhan” and the authorities enforced a draconian lockdown of the entire city. However, 5 million residents had already left.
As soon as he suspected the virus could be transmitted between humans, Prof Yuen also urged the Hong Kong government to take public health precautions.
His claims were backed earlier this year by experts in nearby Taiwan, who also took strict virus prevention measures weeks before the Chinese lockdown after spotting social media posts from the medical community in Wuhan on December 31 about suspicious cases of atypical pneumonia.
Chuang Yin-ching, a senior official working for Taiwan’s Centres for Disease Control, one of a handful of infectious disease experts briefed in Wuhan from January 13-15, told the Telegraph that a Beijing official admitted then that “limited human to human transmission cannot be excluded.”
Both testimonies dovetail with an Associated Press story in April, based on internal documents, that top Chinese officials had determined they were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus six days before warning the public. Some 3,000 people are believed to have been infected during the week of silence.
Some experts believe global chaos could have been averted if action had been taken sooner.
Prof Yuen said: “I know how efficient the virus was spreading and I know that it is acquired in hospital and I know that it can go with people by flights from one city, thousands of miles away. There is one thing that I learned. If you don’t make use of every hour, you are in big, big trouble.”
Lord Patten, former Governor of Hong Kong told Panorama: "Frankly thousands of people will have lost their lives and livelihoods because China did not behave as it promised it would behave according to the international health regulations."
