They also lamented that the team visited a museum exhibit that was a propaganda effort to glorify the Chinese regime’s response to the outbreak.
Zhang Hai, whose father died from COVID-19 last year, questioned why foreign journalists were not allowed to cover the WHO team’s itinerary or interview the experts.
“Investigating the origins of the virus is an honorable task. Why do they look so sneaky?” Zhang questioned. “Personally, I don’t think the WHO team can get any fruitful or trustworthy results.”
“I believe that they must contact real bereaved families to know the truth of the outbreak, the true process of how the virus spread in Wuhan in January last year,” Zhang said. “We have no chance to talk to them… because the authorities don’t allow us.”
He added that authorities have warned him not to post any “sensitive information” on social media.
Another Wuhan resident, surnamed Yu, said: “The WHO team should talk to COVID-19 patients and their families. They should know what Wuhan families experienced, such as how the patients got infected and died.”
Yu expressed doubts that the WHO team would be able to access vital information for the investigation, “because they follow what [Chinese authorities] arrange and only visit and talk to the people who represent the government.”
She lamented that citizen journalists have been sentenced or detained simply because they wanted to investigate the truth of the outbreak.
Itinerary
After being quarantined for 14 days upon landing in Wuhan, the WHO team started their investigations on Jan. 29. That afternoon, they visited the Hubei Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine Hospital.On the second morning, they visited Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, one of the hospitals that first treated COVID-19 patients in severe condition. In the afternoon, they were brought to a museum exhibit about how Wuhan “fought against the virus.”
On the third day, the team visited Baishazhou market, one of the city’s largest wet markets, with a large entourage of Chinese officials and government staff. Then, the team visited the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where the Chinese regime initially claimed the virus emerged. It was sealed off and cleaned by authorities several times last year.
A Wuhan resident surnamed Gao said that since the Huanan market and other venues were cleaned thoroughly in the past year, he questioned what the WHO team could really see.
“All valuable things [the investigation] are gone. I wonder what they can do?” Gao said.
On Feb. 1, the WHO team visited the Hubei provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Wuhan CDC.
On Tuesday, the team visited the Hubei Center for Animal Disease Control and Prevention in Wuhan.
On Wednesday, the team visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a biosafety level-4 laboratory, and spoke with staff there about their daily work. U.S. officials have posited that the virus may have leaked from the Wuhan virology lab and caused the initial outbreak.
‘Patriotism Education’ Exhibit
Chinese authorities have forbidden reporters to approach the WHO team during its Wuhan trip and arrange a large pool of staff to surround the team.So far, the WHO team has revealed little about what they found, aside from a few posts on Twitter with generic information about the trip.
Authorities have named the museum the experts visited on Jan. 30 as a place for “patriotism education.”
The Daily reported that the exhibit was organized by the propaganda department of the CCP’s Central Committee, the Hubei provincial government, and other government entities. The 26 museum tour guides were chosen from museums across Hubei, and received comprehensive training in advance, according to the report.
“The exhibit is promoting the so-called ‘positive socialist energy,’ which is fooling people to support the Party,” Jiang said.
The CCP virus outbreak continues to be underreported in China. Authorities themselves have often announced conflicting data.
