China refused to provide raw data on early cases

China refused to give raw data on early Covid-19 cases to a World Health Organization-led team probing the origins of the pandemic, one of the team's investigators said, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began. 

The team had requested raw patient data on the 174 cases of COVID-19 that China had identified from the early phase of the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, as well as other cases, but were only provided with a summary, said Dominic Dwyer, an Australian infectious diseases expert who is a member of the team.

Such raw data is known as "line listings", he said, and would typically be anonymised but contain details such as what questions were asked of individual patients, their responses and how their responses were analysed.

He said that gaining access to the raw data was especially important since only half of the 174 cases had exposure to the Huanan market in Wuhan, where the virus was initially detected.

While the Chinese authorities provided a lot of material, he said the issue of access to the raw patient data would be mentioned in the team's final report.  A summary of the team's findings could be released as early as next week, the WHO said on Friday.

On Friday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that all hypotheses on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic remained on the table following the WHO's investigation in China.

The mission to Wuhan, where the first cases were spotted, failed to identify the source of the virus but poured cold water on the theory that it leaked from a virology laboratory in the Chinese city.