June 15 (EIRNS)—World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing, today, that more than 100 new COVID-19 infections have now been confirmed in Beijing. A Global Times article on the investigation of the first 79 of these cases wrote: “The [novel] coronavirus found in Beijing’s Xinfadi wholesale market is probably more infectious than those detected in Wuhan’s Huanan seafood market, where the first wave of epidemic in the country was detected [in December 2019], given a significant number of cases confirmed in only four days in the capital city, a virologist said on Monday. Yang Zhanqiu, deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, told the Global Times on Monday that the 79 cases were confirmed in four days, showing the coronavirus found in Beijing is extremely contagious, likely more contagious than that found in Wuhan.”
In Wuhan only 62 infections had been confirmed by Jan. 17, some 18 days after the first. In Beijing, however, authorities say they have carried out 200,000 screens for coronavirus to confirm something over 100 cases.
“A researcher from the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control told China Central Television (CCTV) in a telephone interview that the genome sequencing of the strain of the coronavirus which caused the new COVID-19 outbreak in Beijing at the Xinfadi wholesale food market, shows it originated from Europe,” reported Global Times. This could refer only to its entering China recently from Europe.
However, some researchers have said that the strain of coronavirus which spread in Europe and then likely to the eastern half of the United States, may have been more contagious than that which entered West Coast states from travelers who had been in China.
RECENT ARTICLES ON QUESTION OF MUTATIONS:
Mutation in new coronavirus increases chance of infection – study, Reuters, June 14, 2020
The Medical Project 