Cyprus Mail 16 April 2020 - Reuters News Agency - By Marco Hernandez and Cate Cadell
As residents of China’s Wuhan began leaving for the first time last week, a Reuters analysis of official statements, data and residents’ accounts reveals how the coronavirus took hold and spread to more than 25 areas of the country before a Jan. 23 lockdown of the city.
To the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, on the Russian border, the southern province of Yunnan, on the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, and the far western region of Xinjiang, people drove, flew and travelled by train, on business and to visit relatives for the Lunar New Year holiday.
All the while, the coronavirus travelled with them, from as early as December.
As residents of China’s besieged central city of Wuhan began leaving for the first time last week, a Reuters analysis of official statements, data, and testimonials reveals how the coronavirus took hold, spreading to more than 25 areas of the country before the lockdown, some as early as December 2019.
One cluster in the northern city of Tianjin demonstrates how the virus spread weeks before the lockdown in Wuhan, kicking off a military-style quarantine that would take the country hostage for more than two months.
On January 16, a 43-year-old employee of a city department store made the short trip to a wholesale jewellery mall in the capital, Beijing, where she met a client with a fever.
The mall was more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) from a wet market in Wuhan that was linked to 41 cases of a mysterious virus, though officials at the time said there was no conclusive evidence of transmission among people.
Shortly after returning to work at the Tianjin Baodi Baihe Department Store in Tianjin, one of the woman’s colleagues fell ill, and then another. By January 25, she developed a fever herself.
Between Jan 20 and 24, at least eight staff and 21 customers later confirmed to be infected visited the store. A further 15 family members, drivers and close contacts of the customers and staff also caught the virus.
Within weeks the department store would emerge as one of the largest virus clusters recorded outside Wuhan, and the focus of a mass containment effort that scoured surveillance footage, set up roadblocks and traced more than 9,000 close contacts linked to it.
Two Baodi residents told Reuters the store is a large, highly trafficked, multi-floor complex, consisting of small local shops, with an open floor plan. One resident, who visited around Jan. 15, said it was busier than usual ahead of the Lunar New Year break.
Contact tracing details released by local authorities paint a picture of families shopping before the holiday, and meeting after for family gatherings, driving the spread of the virus.
One couple visited the store on Jan. 21, before going to a family meal on Jan. 25, the first day of the Lunar New Year, before developing symptoms in early February. Another couple in their 40s visited the store on Jan 20. A 22-year-old female relative then developed symptoms, followed by the couple’s 10-year-old son, who went into isolation on Feb. 13 and is the youngest patient linked to the store.
A further nine people with no traceable link to the store or its customers but who lived in the same area also fell ill.
Some infected people continued to work in jobs where they interacted with a large number of people, including school teachers, drivers and pharmacy staff.
The discovery of the cluster triggered closure of the store in early February, and a district-wide surveillance operation to trace more than 9,200 people who came in contact with the store and its staff.
One source, a civil servant in the city, told Reuters the people were traced through footage from surveillance cameras that enabled officials to go door-to-door, flagging addresses for quarantine and disinfection.
“The store was tightly sealed, special personnel patrol it and there are warning signs up,” said the civil servant, who sought anonymity in the absence of authorisation to speak to media. “Entry to the area is strictly prohibited.”
Two residents confirmed that police came to their homes in the sweep. One, who had visited the store on Jan. 15, was told they did not need medical supervision. They were warned not to leave home for at least two weeks.
“The whole district mobilized to investigate the people in the department store,” said resident Sun Ran.
With each confirmation, health authorities broadcast information about the specific areas of the store visited, along with the time and date of the visit, she added.
“It used to be impossible to get in and out of the house, but now it’s better, even if we’re not completely free,” said Ran. “At least it’s not as bad as Wuhan.”
Superspreaders
Several people have been labelled super spreaders of the disease in its earliest days. Most of them had direct links to Wuhan, living in the city or travelling for work.
On Jan. 20, a government disease expert released information on a patient dubbed “toxic king”, a colloquial term for super spreader, who was thought to have given the disease to 14 healthcare workers in Wuhan in January.
It was one of the key findings that led to the Wuhan lockdown.
Another well known cluster was linked to Mr. Wu, a 74-year-old resident of Dongyang in the eastern province of Zhejiang, who began having regular contact from Jan. 16 with an unidentified individual who had recently returned home from Wuhan but would later be confirmed an asymptomatic carrier.
Before his symptoms appeared on Jan. 22, Mr. Wu rode several buses and met a wide range of people.
He also is thought to have spread the disease while in an unquarantined hospital ward, days before doctors suspected he had the virus.
Mr. Wu is thought to have infected at least 8 people, many of his own family among them, beginning a cluster of 560 people quarantined at home and in centralised institutions.
From Wuhan to elsewhere
By the time of Wuhan’s lockdown on Jan. 23, infected people had moved across China ahead of the New Year; from Tibet in the far west to the Russian border province of Heilongjiang, and to southwestern Yunnan, which borders several nations of southeast Asia.
A 66-year-old man from the southern province of Guangdong is one of the first known to have carried the disease beyond Wuhan, developing symptoms on his return from a late Dec. trip to the central city, days before publicity about the disease and the closure of the Huanan Seafood Market, where the virus is believed to have first emerged.
Another man, also 66, had developed symptoms even earlier, on December 29, before travelling home to the central province of Henan on Jan 7.
In the period before Jan 10, when the disease was officially identified as a new coronavirus and testing could begin, infected people also travelled to Beijing, the commercial hub of Shanghai and the eastern provinces of Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. By the Jan 23 lockdown, infected patients had travelled virtually everywhere in China.
By the end of January, at least 122 carriers with known links to Wuhan had moved to countries and territories beyond the mainland, including nine Asian countries and eight European nations, as well as Canada, Australia and the United States.
New infections in China have declined sharply since a peak of 15,000 cases reported in a single day in February. Since the beginning of April, the country has reported a daily average of 51 cases, the majority linked to people returning from overseas.
As the figures have fallen, officials and state media have declared victory on the disease, but efforts to reopen China from months of lockdown are slow, as fears grow that a new wave of infections could quickly cripple the densely-populated country a second time.
Sources: Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Baodi District, Local Government reports, China CDC and Reuters reporting By Marco Hernandez and Cate Cadell Additional work by Gurman Bhatia Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Simon Scarr
