The Associated Press published a lengthy story yesterday looking at the long history of China lying about the origins of COVID-19. Some of this will be familiar territory for people who followed this story closely but other aspects were new to me (and also to the WHO), including the possibility that China inspected the Wuhan wet market on Christmas day 2019, nearly a week before the Dec. 31, 2019 visit already known to the world.
WHO officials heard of an earlier inspection of the market on Dec. 25, 2019, according to a recording of a confidential WHO meeting provided to AP by an attendee. Such a probe has never been mentioned publicly by either Chinese authorities or WHO.
In the recording, WHO’s top animal virus expert, Peter Ben Embarek, mentioned the earlier date, describing it as “an interesting detail.” He told colleagues that officials were “looking at what was on sale…
