Helen Davidson
Taipei (Taiwan) —
26 of January of 2021
A doctor at the Wuhan hospital most affected by the COVID-19 epidemic has stated that weeks before the Chinese authorities admitted him, at the beginning of January 2020, He and his colleagues already suspected that the virus was highly contagious but were prevented from telling anyone..
The doctor's testimony is part of a new BBC documentary about the 54 days elapsed between the first known case of coronavirus and the confinement of the city of Wuhan. It is one more of the growing evidence that points to an attempt by Beijing to cover up the outbreak by threatening health workers into silence..
A few kilometers from the wet market’ de Huanan, epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, The Wuhan central hospital was quickly overwhelmed by the growth in the number of patients after the first cases in December 2019. More of 200 Hospital employees were infected with the virus and several died. Among them, the doctor who alerted his colleagues on social networks and was punished for it, Li Wenliang.
54 days
The hospital's respiratory disease unit was already full on 10 January, according to what the doctor tells the BBC, who preferred to remain anonymous, during the recording of the documentary 54 Days. "Estaba fuera de control, empezamos a entrar en pánico", dice.
But the hospital authorities prohibited them from speaking to anyone and did not allow them to wear masks.. "Todo el mundo sabía que era un contagio entre personas, even a fool would know. So, ¿why say there was nothing? Esto nos confundió y nos enfadó mucho".
According to the doctor, In a few weeks there were hundreds or thousands of suspected cases, but there was no mechanism in the hospital infrastructure that would allow diagnoses to be confirmed or recorded. At that moment, they had only been notified 41 cases officially.
Previous reports have revealed that authorities in Beijing were aware of a possible pandemic for at least six days during which they told the public that the risk was low.. Until the day 20 January they finally warned of infections between people. Chinese authorities have also been accused of delaying the release of the genome sequence for several days., until Professor Zhang Yongzhen disobeyed strict orders and published the sequence he had created on the Internet.
Speaking to the BBC, American virologist Ian Lipkin says that the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, George Gao, contacted him around new year, when rumors about the virus began to circulate. According to Lipkin, Gao told him that they had identified the virus and that it was not highly contagious. "No creo que haya sido una mentira, creo que simplemente se equivocó", Lipkin says.. "I should have released some footage and said 'this is what we know'".
Gao, who refused to be interviewed by the BBC, He has told state media that the sequences were published as soon as possible and that he never said there was no human-to-human contagion..
He 23 January, when Wuhan was confined, Wuhan central hospital received 2.500 cases per day. "Había pacientes que no tenían por qué morir, we couldn't do anything, los recursos sanitarios eran demasiado escasos en ese momento", says the doctor interviewed by the BBC. "Creo que hay que tener presente lo que de verdad ocurrió, tenemos que aprender las lecciones para que esto no vuelva a pasar".
China insists that it quickly published all relevant information and denies all accusations of a cover-up..
According to Professor Laurence Gostin, director of the collaborating center of the World Health Organization (OMS) in health law from Georgetown University, The fact that China did not report the existence of the virus represents a violation of international health regulations and repeats the cover-up carried out during the SARS epidemic in 2003. "El país tiene la obligación de responder a las preguntas de la OMS de forma transparente, comprehensive and sincere, y no creo que eso haya ocurrido del todo", dice.
The questionable reaction of the WHO
The BBC documentary also questions the reaction of the WHO, who publicly continued to defend China's assurances that there was no evidence of human-to-human contagion, even when agency experts believed otherwise and asked world leaders to prepare.
In a leak of audio from internal WHO meetings, obtained by the AP agency and broadcast by the BBC, WHO authorities are heard talking about the similarity of the situation with that of the SARS outbreak, sobre los “intentos incesantes de obtener actualizaciones de China", y sobre el peligro de "señalar con el dedo" if something happened.
"Decir que no hay pruebas de contagio entre humanos no es suficiente. We have to see the data, we have to be able to determine for ourselves the geographical distribution, the chronology, todo eso", said the WHO emergencies chief, Michael Ryan, at a meeting in early January. The next day, WHO authorities once again praised China's response.
Currently, Chinese authorities are battling the country's worst outbreak since the beginning of 2020, although the number of cases is much smaller. In Wuhan, A mission of WHO scientists is completing its quarantine before beginning the long-awaited investigation into the origins of the virus. Team members insist it's not about blaming anyone, but they fear that China will not guarantee them the access necessary due to Beijing's attempts to rewrite the story about the origins of the virus.
The documentary aired this Tuesday on the BBC network 2. It is the first in a series of two, with the next episode focusing on the response to the pandemic in the United States.
Translated by Francisco de Zárate
