The sample had been collected from a pneumonia patient in Wuhan, Hubei province.
“It’s similar to when you cannot see the enemy during a war if you cannot get a clear picture of a virus when fighting an infectious disease, ” said Wu, chief biosafety expert at the China CDC.
In the initial days of the Covid-19 outbreak, when the disease was referred to as “pneumonia caused by unknown causes”, Wu and other virologists at the China CDC’s National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention had never been busier. The virologists worked around the clock to analyse the sample using the latest technology.