Wuhan wet market is the ‘victim’ of coronavirus outbreak, China’s CDC says

The Wuhan wet market believed to be the origin of the coronavirus pandemic has been unfairly made into a scapegoat for the pandemic, China’s top health official claimed.

“At first, we assumed the seafood market might have the virus, but now the market is more like a victim,” George Gao Fu, who is director of Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the state-owned Global Times.

Gao suggested that the bug had been circulating for a while before the outbreak, saying samples collected from animals in the market in early January showed no traces of the virus.

“The novel coronavirus had existed long before,” Gao said.

He said more time is necessary before researchers can come to any conclusions about the source of the outbreak.

“The novel coronavirus overturns much of what people have known and many of its patterns are beyond our cognition,” he said.

The city’s Huanan Seafood Market has been identified as the site where the first human may have contracted the virus that has now killed more than 350,000 people worldwide.

China has resisted calls to allow outside health officials investigate the source of the outbreak, only recently coming around to the idea of an inquiry focused solely on “global response” in fighting COVID-19.