The FRONTLINE documentary China’s COVID Secrets and techniques tells the story of the start of the coronavirus pandemic that will overtake the world, and the way Chinese language medical doctors, scientists, well being officers and political leaders responded. Right here, we spotlight a number of the key moments within the earliest days of the outbreak.
The town of Wuhan.
December 1, 2019 A person in his 70s begins experiencing signs. He’s later admitted to a hospital in Wuhan, China.
Huanan Seafood Market.
Mid-December, 2019 Folks start turning up at hospitals in Wuhan with unusual white spots on their lung scans. Lots of the instances are traced again to town’s Huanan Seafood Market, the place a wide range of reside animals are bought. Whether or not the market is the place the virus first leapt from animals to people is unknown.
December 24, 2019 A pattern is taken from a Wuhan Central Hospital affected person’s lungs and despatched to Imaginative and prescient Medicals, a personal firm 500 miles from Wuhan that produces a partial genetic sequence of the virus inside 48 hours.
A lung scan of a COVID-19 affected person.
December 26, 2019 The sequence from the affected person in Wuhan is strikingly just like the virus that precipitated SARS, which sickened over 8,000 individuals and killed greater than 700 in 2003.
The lab goes on to tell the Wuhan Central Hospital medical doctors and town’s CDC.
Wuhan Central Hospital.
December 30, 2019 Round this time, hospitals in Wuhan begin seeing dozens of sufferers with extreme pneumonia.
Extra virus samples are despatched to different labs for sequencing. One lab tells Wuhan Central Hospital, mistakenly, that the virus is SARS itself. The lab’s outcomes flow into shortly among the many medical doctors and attain Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist.
Li forwards a message to a bunch of medical doctors with a warning: “Don’t flow into this info exterior the group, inform your loved ones and family members to take precautions.”
His message goes viral.
The native well being fee orders Wuhan hospitals to report new instances on to them and bars the discharge of data to the general public. The orders leak and unfold on-line.
Phrase of the virus additionally reaches Marjorie Pollack, an epidemiologist, in New York. “My response was ‘we’re in hassle.’ It was very a lot a deja vu of what occurred with SARS-1.” Her group, Promed, sends a notification out to round 80,000 subscribers all over the world.
December 31, 2019 China’s Nationwide Well being Fee instructs Wuhan well being officers to announce the outbreak. Officers describe the illness to the general public as a “viral pneumonia” that’s beneath management, with no proof of human-to-human transmission: “We’ve investigated and it has no relationship to SARS.”
The World Well being Group emblem.
January 1, 2020 Wuhan police reprimand a number of of the medical doctors who unfold information about an outbreak. Chinese language state TV labels them “rumormongers.” Li Wenliang is known as to a police station to signal a confession that accuses him of “publishing fictitious discourse” that has “severely disrupted social order.”
The Chinese language authorities disputes that what occurred to Li is proof that they have been attempting to suppress details about the outbreak. They preserve he was merely urged to not unfold unconfirmed info.
The World Well being Group learns in regards to the outbreak from social media and from Promed, not from the Chinese language authorities. The WHO requests extra info from China’s Nationwide Well being Fee and begins emergency convention calls.
January 3, 2020 The WHO is instructed the Chinese language authorities has recognized 44 instances of “viral pneumonia” of unknown trigger.
Professor Zhang Yongzhen, a famend virologist.
January 5, 2020 Labs throughout China quietly rush to finish a genetic sequence of the brand new virus, together with one run by Professor Zhang Yongzhen, a famend virologist. Within the wee hours of January 5, Zhang obtains a full genetic sequence confirming the virus’s similarity to SARS and its probably transmission between people.
Virologist Eddie Holmes, who has been working with Zhang on a long-term mission, says Zhang is keen to launch the sequence as quickly as potential. However there’s an issue. “There was an official memorandum that had gone via saying that we weren’t allowed to do that,” Holmes notes. “So he was put in fairly a troublesome place.”
China’s Nationwide Well being Fee had despatched secret orders to the labs barring them from publishing their outcomes with out authorization.
January 6, 2020 New York Instances reporter Sui-Lee Wee writes an article with the headline, “China Grapples With Thriller Pneumonia-Like Sickness.”
“I believed that the Chinese language authorities wouldn’t consider protecting up the way in which they did throughout SARS,” Wee says. “And that if the hospitals have been overwhelmed, there can be no strategy to cowl that up.”
The Chinese language authorities insists it “took probably the most complete, rigorous and thorough measures,” and that President Xi Jinping issued epidemic response directions by January seventh. The small print of these directions haven’t been made public.
Airport in Thailand.
January 8, 2020 A 61-year-old girl travels to Thailand from Wuhan. Temperature checks on the airport point out she has a temperature of greater than 38° celsius (100° F). Publicly, the Chinese language authorities has been saying the outbreak is linked to the Huanan Seafood Market. When Thai well being officers discuss to the lady, they discover that she has had no contact with the market.
“That’s actually the important info for us, that the spreading could also be generalized in Wuhan,” says Rome Buathong of Thailand’s ministry of public well being.
Wuhan Central Hospital at evening.
January 9-10, 2020 “The respiratory division grew to become full round ninth or tenth January. I spotted that this factor had turn into massive. It was uncontrolled. Then we began to panic,” a well being care employee from Wuhan Central Hospital tells FRONTLINE.
“The hospital instructed us that we weren’t allowed to talk to anybody,” the employee says. “They wouldn’t even allow us to put on masks. They mentioned they have been afraid of inflicting panic.”
Some well being staff later instructed Chinese language media they tried voicing considerations to the authorities, however native and provincial officers ignored them. FRONTLINE reached out to the native and provincial governments for remark however didn’t obtain a response.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
January 11, 2020 A consultant of the WHO says on Chinese language state TV: “It seems that … new instances have stopped after the market was briefly closed. So the general public well being intervention has managed this a part of the outbreak. And we are able to see that there is no such thing as a clear proof of sustained human-to-human transmission, which supplies us a number of reassurance.”
The consultant praises the “sheer pace of the response in China” and “the extraordinarily fast investigation.”
Earlier than this, in non-public, WHO officers had expressed concern about China’s lack of transparency in regards to the virus.
Though Chinese language state TV has confirmed the outbreak is a novel coronavirus, virologist Zhang Yongzhen remains to be prohibited from releasing his full genetic sequencing. His colleague, Eddie Holmes, urges Zhang on. Holmes says, “The sequence launch was a key second as a result of it instructed individuals ‘that is the pathogen, that is what it seems to be like. It’s an actual factor. Right here it’s. And now we are able to begin.’”
Inside hours, China’s CDC and Nationwide Well being Fee share the genetic sequencing they’ve obtained with the WHO and the general public.
January 13, 2020 German scientists publish a toolkit so different international locations can take a look at for instances.
Thailand studies the primary confirmed case of the brand new virus exterior China — the 61-year-old girl — to the WHO.
Mid-January, 2020 Wuhan hospitals are treating tons of of sufferers with respiratory signs. The well being care employee at Wuhan Central Hospital says: “Each day there have been a number of hundred individuals with fever arriving at our emergency division. A whole bunch each day. I used to be undoubtedly afraid. I spotted that this sickness was all over the place.”
Sufferers start to die.
Native and provincial authorities solely depend instances linked on to the Huanan market, based on leaked paperwork. And solely they’re licensed to verify instances, not medical doctors.
January 14, 2020 The Chinese language authorities secretly begins ramping up its response.
“So The Related Press’ world investigative crew obtained some paperwork [that show] that on January 14th, China’s high well being official, Ma Xiaowei, he instructed the nation’s public well being establishments to organize for a potential pandemic,” says Related Press reporter Dake Kang.
Temperature checks present up at prepare stations and airports round Wuhan. Hospitals throughout China are instructed to begin preparing. The federal government authorizes Chinese language state media to say that restricted human-to-human transmission of the virus can’t be dominated out.
“These paperwork reveal that central authorities have been very alarmed in regards to the virus by January 14th,” Kang says. “However in public, once more, they weren’t actually elevating the alarm.”
In its official timeline, the Chinese language authorities says that on the time, there was nice uncertainty in regards to the new illness and that extra analysis was wanted to grasp its mode of transmission.
So far, the WHO has caught to China’s official line. However on the group’s first press convention in regards to the outbreak, a WHO official seems to contradict that there is no such thing as a clear proof of human-to-human transmission, saying: “To this point with the present virus, now we have restricted human-to-human transmission. However what we’re making ready for is the likelihood that there will probably be, there may very well be.”
A New York Instances reporter attempting to verify the feedback says the WHO tells her that there was a “misunderstanding”; there is no such thing as a clear proof of human-to-human transmission.
A WHO spokesperson tells FRONTLINE they didn’t intend to recommend on the time that human transmission was undoubtedly taking place. WHO scientists weren’t on the bottom, and so the group couldn’t make the dedication formally.
January 19, 2020 Outbreaks seem in different elements of China. Regardless of the Chinese language authorities’s inside warnings to well being officers a couple of potential pandemic, there is no such thing as a public lockdown as tens of millions of Chinese language put together to journey for Lunar New Yr.
The top of Wuhan’s CDC continues to reassure the general public: “The scientific manifestation of sufferers usually is delicate. So we are able to have the preliminary impression that the transmissibility of this new coronavirus is just not sturdy. The epidemic is preventable and controllable.”
January 20, 2020 By today, 198 coronavirus instances have formally been reported.
The Chinese language authorities lastly acknowledges that the novel coronavirus is spreading from human to human.
Hospital ward.
January 23, 2020 There at the moment are 571 official instances of coronavirus in China.
The Chinese language authorities locations Wuhan beneath lockdown.
George Gao, the director of China’s CDC, goes on to inform the media: “Everybody likes to check it with SARS. However truly, this virus is just not as sturdy as SARS. We’re seeing many delicate instances.”
However COVID-19 proves rather more transmissible than SARS, and sufferers overwhelm hospitals.
“It erupted too quick, after which there have been simply too many individuals contaminated,” says the Wuhan Central Hospital well being care employee. “With out ventilators, with out particular medication, even with out sufficient manpower, how have been we going to avoid wasting individuals? For those who’re unarmed on the battlefield, how are you going to kill the enemy?”
China maintains “We have now all alongside been in good communication and cooperation with the WHO” and “China has supplied well timed info to the world in an open, clear and accountable method.”
