COVID-19 and China: A Chronology of Events (December 2019-January 2020)

[PeteS in CA]

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46354

COVID-19 and China: A Chronology of Events (December 2019-January 2020)

DAt 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST), a ProMed user posted a machine translation of a
Chinese-language report about the outbreak from a news organization, Yicai, the financial news
arm of China’s state-owned Shanghai Media Group.18 Yicai had published its report online just
under three hours earlier.19 It detailed the contents of two Wuhan Municipal Health Commission
“urgent notices” about atypical pneumonia cases, which the commission had sent the day before
to medical institutions in Wuhan, and which internet users in Wuhan had leaked online within
minutes.20

Another document from Wuhan that circulated widely online overnight on December 30-31—a
photograph of a patient lab report showing a positive result for SARS, with the SARS finding
circled in red—alerted Chinese news organizations to the possible significance of the “urgent
notices.”
21 The head of emergency medicine at Wuhan Central Hospital, Dr. Ai Fen, had shared
the image online with a former classmate and a group of colleagues in the time between the
issuance of the two Wuhan Municipal Health Commission “urgent notices” on December 30.22
...
For WHO, the ProMED post appears to have triggered Articles 9 and 10 of IHR (2005). Article 9
provides for WHO to “take into account reports from sources other than notifications or
consultations” by State Parties, and then “attempt to obtain verification from the State Party in
whose territory the event is allegedly occurring.” Article 10 requires State Parties to respond to
verification requests from WHO within 24 hours.25
Speaking at a WHO press conference on April 20, 2020, Ryan said as soon as WHO headquarters
learned about the outbreak from ProMed on December 31, it asked the WHO China Country
Office to request “verification of the event” from the government of China under IHR (2005). ...
...
China’s government appears to have potentially hesitated before informing WHO both when it
determined a novel coronavirus was responsible for the outbreak and when its scientists
sequenced the virus’ genome. On January 9, 2020, WHO announced, “Chinese authorities have
made a preliminary determination of a novel (or new) coronavirus, identified in a hospitalized
person with pneumonia in Wuhan.”
30 On January 11, 2020, WHO tweeted, “BREAKING: WHO
has received the genetic sequences for the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) from the Chinese
authorities.”
31 China appears to have determined that a novel coronavirus was responsible days
before January 9, 2020, however. Its scientists also sequenced the virus’ genome days earlier than
January 11, 2020.
According to Caixin, a respected Chinese news organization, hospitals in Wuhan sent samples
from their pneumonia cases to commercial companies for analysis in late December 2019.
Several of those companies informed the hospitals that the patient samples indicated a novel
coronavirus. One company, BGI Genomics, completed genomic sequencing of the novel
coronavirus on December 26, 2019, Caixin reports.
32 The next entity reported to have sequenced
the genome was the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), an affiliate of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences. Chinese state media say WIV sequenced the virus’ genome on January 2.33
A timeline in a March 26, 2020, article by China CDC experts and others in The New England
Journal of Medicine indicates China CDC sequenced the genome on January 3, 2020.
34 ...

A fourth group of scientists, led by Prof. Yong-zhen Zhang of Fudan University in Shanghai,
sequenced the genome on January 5, 2020, and was the first to share it with the world.36 They
deposited the sequence with the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s GenBank, a database of

30 World Health Organization, “WHO Statement Regarding Cluster of Pneumonia Cases in Wuhan, China,” January 9,
2020, https://www.who.int/china/news/detail/09-01-2020-who-statement-regarding-cluster-of-pneumonia-cases-inwuhan-china.
31 Tweet from World Health Organization, January 11, 2020, https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1216108498188230657.
32 Gao Yu, Peng Yanfeng, Yang Rui, et al, “In Depth: How Early Signs of a SARS-Like Virus Were Spotted, Spread,
and Throttled,” Caixin Global, February 29, 2020, https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-02-29/in-depth-how-earlysigns-of-a-sars-like-virus-were-spotted-spread-and-throttled-101521745.html.
33 “Chinese Researchers Race Against Coronavirus,” China.org, April 20, 2020, http://www.china.org.cn/china/2020-
04/20/content_75953343.htm.
34 Qun Li, Xuhua Guan, Peng Wu, et al., “Early Transmission Dynamics in Wuhan, China, of Novel CoronavirusInfected Pneumonia,” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 382, no. 13, March 26, 2020, https://www.nejm.org/
doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001316.
35 “Timeline of China Releasing Information on COVID-19 and Advancing International Cooperation on Epidemic
Response,” Xinhua, April 6, 2020, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-04/06/c_138951662.htm. “8 名病毒性肺
炎患者出院 病原体初步判定为新型冠状病毒” (“8 Viral Pneumonia Patients Leave Hospital; The Pathogen Is
Preliminarily Determined to Be a Novel Coronavirus”), Chinese Central Television, January 9, 2020,
http://news.cctv.com/2020/01/09/ARTI1qaoXDCwfiFM5UPAnNy9200109.shtml.
36 Jon Cohen, “Chinese Researchers Reveal Draft Genome of Virus Implicated in Wuhan Pneumonia Outbreak,”
Science, January 11, 2020, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/chinese-researchers-reveal-draft-genome-virusimplicated-wuhan-pneumonia-outbreak.
COVID-19 and China: A Chronology of Events (December 2019-January 2020)
Congressional Research Service 8
publicly available DNA sequences, on January 5,
37 ...
...
* Wuhan doctors suspected person-to-person transmission of the mysterious new
pneumonia as early as late December. Dr. Zhang Jixian of the Hubei Provincial
Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine later told China’s state
news agency that she reported a family cluster of cases to her superiors on
December 27, 2019, because, “It is unlikely that all three members of a family
caught the same disease at the same time unless it is an infectious disease.”
43 ...

* Wuhan medical personnel began falling ill with symptoms similar to their
patients’ in December, but Chinese authorities did not acknowledge medical
worker infections until January 20. ...
...
* The United States made multiple offers over the course of January 2020 to send a
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S. CDC) team to China to
assist with response to the outbreak. Any team that went would also have learned
information about the epidemic of relevance to the U.S. response. The timeline
shows U.S. officials offered to send a U.S. CDC team on January 4, January 6,
and January 27. ...

1. This document is a US Government report, which is why I've quoted so much.

2. The document is 54 pages long, so what I quoted is a small % of it.

3. Holy CRAP, this sucker is the motherlode! It collects into one document about as much as is known about what happened in China. For example, I did not know that China's 12/31/19 "revelation" happened then only because news had leaked out. For example, I was not aware of how many Chinese entities had sequenced the virus DNA as much as 2 or 3 weeks before China posted that sequence through WHO. For example, I knew, generally, that the CDC had offered in very early January to send people to assist China, but had not been able to find confirmation.

[Smokin Joe]

Thanks @PeteS in CA !