Three Months in Review: The Spread of Coronavirus from Wuhan to the Rest of China and Other Countries ( from Chinese citizens)

Three Months in Review: The Spread of Coronavirus from Wuhan to the Rest of China and Other Countries

March 08, 2020

The first coronavirus infection was detected in December 2019. The epicenter, Wuhan, was locked down on January 23, 2020, two days before the Chinese New Year, but that did not prevent the virus from spreading to other regions.

As the capital of Hubei Province and a hub of both land and air traffic along the Yangtze River, Wuhan has a registered urban population of 9 million, as well as 5 million temporary residents. About 5 million people managed to flee the city after the lockdown order was issued, said Wuhan mayor Zhou Xianwang on January 26.

As of March 6, the coronavirus has spread to nearly 100 countries and territories with over 100,000 infections and close to 3,500 deaths around the world.

Since its initial outbreak three months ago, officials and news media controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have been downplaying the epidemic. Measures have been taken at every level of government to underreport the number of infections. As of March 6, 2020, officials in China claimed 80,813 cases, including 67,592 in Wuhan alone. The number of deaths in China is reported as 3,073.

As described in this three-month summary report, the actual numbers of infections and deaths are likely to be much higher, as a large number of cases remain unreported during the continued cover-up by the CCP.

Initial Outbreak (December 2019 to January 20, 2020)
“There is evidence that human-to-human transmission has occurred among close contacts since the middle of December 2019,” reported a January 29, 2020 article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Titled “Early Transmission Dynamics in Wuhan, China, of Novel Coronavirus–Infected Pneumonia,” the article was written by a group of scientists at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC).

But CCDC did not declare the disease transferable from human to human until January 20, 2020, a month after the outbreak began. During that month, Wuhan officials repeatedly told the public that the virus was “controllable and preventable,” and they did not take necessary measures to prevent the virus from spreading.

On December 31, 2019, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued an “Urgent notice on the treatment of pneumonia of unknown cause” to local medical facilities, warning that some shoppers at Huanan Seafood Market had exhibited pneumonia symptoms. The notice urged each institution to tally their patients with similar symptoms. Wuhan residents thought they were facing a recurrence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) from 2003.

On the same day of the notice, medical experts from Beijing arrived in Wuhan and issued three criteria for patients to be considered confirmed cases: a) previous exposure to Huanan Seafood Market, 2) fever, and 3) verification from whole genome sequencing. According to an article on the financial news media Caixin Weekly, such criteria were too strict to identify asymptomatic cases, which led to further spread of the disease.

On January 1, 2020, eight physicians were punished by the Wuhan police for talking with others about the surging epidemic. Police said the disease was under control and would not spread between humans. These eight physicians were charged with “illegal acts of fabricating and spreading rumors and disrupting social order.” One of them, Dr. Li Wenliang from Wuhan Central Hospital, was later infected and died of the virus on February 6, 2020.

Also on January 1, 2020, Huanan Seafood Market was closed for cleaning. The next day, the Wuhan-based People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Naval University of Engineering issued a notice barring external personnel from entering its campus. This notice indicated that the Chinese navy was already aware of the infection in 2019 and had issued a policy (2019-298) to control it. Similarly, the PLA Central Theater General Hospital also had knowledge of the virus situation.

On January 3, 2020, officials in Wuhan reported 44 cases. Although little was known about the source, transmission route, and mutation of the virus, news media in China claimed the disease was “preventable and controllable.” On January 10, Xinhua News Agency interviewed Wang Hailong, a physician who had been involved in the SARS prevention efforts in 2003. Wang said that no deaths, infections by healthcare workers, or human-to-human transmission had been observed. He assured the public that it did not need to worry.

On January 5, 2020, Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center (affiliated with Shanghai Fudan University) submitted an internal report to the National Health Commission. The center claimed a coronavirus had been detected in the respiratory tract lavage fluid from a patient with pneumonia symptoms who had links to Huanan Seafood Market. Whole genome sequencing showed the genetic material of the virus as 89.11% homologous to that of SARS, and this new virus was referred to as Wuhan-Hu-1.

On January 8, this virus was determined to be a new coronavirus and was later renamed as 2019-nCoV.

Wang Guangfa, chief surgeon of Peking University First Hospital’s pulmonary and critical care medicine department, announced on January 11 through People’s Daily that the virus was weak in causing disease. He also said the patients and the overall infection situation were “under control.”

On January 14, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) said limited human-to-human transmission of the new coronavirus had been observed, mainly within small clusters in families. Maria Van Kerkhove, acting head of WHO’s emerging diseases unit, said the agency had given guidance to hospitals worldwide about infection control in case of spread, including by a “super-spreading” event in a health care setting.

Not long after that, however, WHO cited quotes from Chinese officials saying no evidence showed the virus being transmitted between humans. On the morning of January 15, 2020, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said that although no evidence had been found for human-to-human transmission, it could not rule out the possibility of limited transmission between humans.

On January 17, 2020, a report by London Imperial College’s MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis said there were likely to be “substantially more cases.” The report estimated that there were 1,723 cases as of January 12 in Wuhan.

Although officials already knew in December 2019 that the virus could spread between humans, residents in the Baibuting community of Wuhan were required to attend an annual feast on January 18, 2020. Hosted by the Wuhan government, more than 40,000 families prepared a total of 14,000 dishes to share. Days later, many in the community began to show symptoms of coronavirus infection. The city of Wuhan was locked down five days later on January 23.

A volunteer working at the event revealed that he and some community staff members received insider news that Wuhan was to be locked down, but they were told the feast had to go on. One neighborhood committee staff member said they had heard about the virus in early January. After being notified on January 15 that the disease could spread from person to person, he and others suggested canceling the banquet, but their request was denied.

On January 19, 2020, Chutian Metropolis Daily reported that a large-scale event hosted by the Wuhan Culture and Tourism Bureau would be held the following day with an estimated attendance of 200,000 people.

According to Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., Chinese officials arrested at least 325 residents between January 22 and 28 alone. Most of them were charged with “spreading rumors,” “creating panic,” or “attempting to disrupt social order.” They were punished with detention, fines, or disciplinary education.

More [link to en.minghui.org]

50% rule observed