China fetes 'bat woman' as WHO says COVID patient zero may 'never be found'

As a WHO-led team probing the COVID-19 origins braced for virtual meetings with its Chinese hosts in Wuhan, where the pandemic first emerged over a year ago, an expert warned that the world may never find “patient zero.”

Maria Van Kerkhove, World Health Organization’s technical lead on the disease, made the remark on Friday (January 15) even as WHO experts confined themselves in a hotel in Wuhan to serve 14-day quarantine.

The 13-member WHO team’s visit to Wuhan comes at a time when China has feted a virologist of a Wuhan-based lab from where the killer virus is said to have originated.

Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Institute of Virology is known as ‘Bat Woman’ for her passionate research on bats and viruses. Shi was honoured as an “advanced worker of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)”, the state-run Global Times reported, citing a WIV announcement on Friday.

Also read: China jails citizen journalist for 4 years for coronavirus report from Wuhan

US President Trump has been alleging that the virus emanated from WIV before it spread across the world and killed millions of people and ruined global economies.

Shi was honoured along with 20 advanced workers during the CAS 2021 annual work conference held in Beijing, said Liu Lijun, director of the National Commendation and Rewarding Office of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

She was praised as adhering to the scientific values of innovation, serving the country and benefiting people, and fought hard and never flinched in the face of difficulties and challenges, the report said.

After her name appeared in a section of media early last year, Shi disappeared. She suddenly resurfaced in official Chinese media and stoutly disputed reports of her defection to the West, questioning Trump’s allegation that the virus emerged from WIV.

“Trump’s claim affects our academic work and personal lives. He owes us an apology,” she was quoted by official media.

The WHO team may visit the WIV and the wet market, where the deadly virus was suspected to have been transmitted from live animals like bats to humans. The market remained closed and sealed since early last year.

China has delayed giving permission to the WHO team. The country on Friday allowed one of the two WHO experts, earlier barred from travelling to Wuhan for testing COVID-19 positive, to join his colleagues in the city.

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Meanwhile, more than 2,800 scientists from 130 countries gathered on Friday in a virtual forum hosted by the WHO to identify knowledge gaps and set research priorities for vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

They discussed the safety and efficacy of existing vaccines and new candidates, ways to optimise limited supply, and the need for additional safety studies.

“The development and approval of several safe and effective vaccines less than a year after this virus was isolated and sequenced is an astounding scientific accomplishment,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, in his opening remarks.

“The approval of the first few vaccines does not mean the job is done. Far from it. More vaccines are in the pipeline, which must be evaluated to ensure we have enough doses to vaccinate everyone.”

More than 30 million vaccine doses have already been administered in 47 mostly high-income countries. But the global vaccine rollout has exposed glaring inequalities in access to this life-saving tool, WHO said.

“The spirit of collaboration has to prevail in these challenging times as we seek to understand this virus,” said Dr John Nkengasong, Director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. “We have to be mindful of the inequalities and we must deliberately promote investment in regional capacities to level the playing field and have meaningful collaboration to begin to address some of the challenges.”

Experts agreed the need for critical research on administering vaccines in different target populations, as well as on vaccination delivery strategies and schedules. This includes trials, modelling and observational studies, WHO said.

“The WHO will regularly convene experts from around the world, promote collaborative research, provide standard protocols and develop a platform for sharing the latest knowledge in the field,” said Dr Soumya Swaminathan, WHO Chief Scientist.