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No new cases of the coronavirus were reported from January 6 to
17. And, in a fateful decision doubtlessly approved by Xi, the city
went ahead with its traditional celebration of Chinese Lunar New
Year beginning on January 18.
The festivities presented ideal conditions for spreading the vi-
rus. Forty thousand families attended an enormous potluck ban-
quet in Wuhan. During the event, people embraced old friends,
crowded together to take photos, and shared home-cooked
dishes with chopsticks. Afterward, many of the attendees, part
of a fl ood of some 5 million people allowed to leave Wuhan, jet-
ted off to destinations around the world. There was no prefl ight
screening of passengers for the coronavirus. In one community
in Hubei Province, fi fty-seven residential centers were designated
as “fever buildings” after residents who had attended the banquet
became ill.
On January 21 Wuhan mayor Zhou Xianwang revealed in an
interview that Hubei had 270 confi rmed cases and that six Wu-
han citizens had died after becoming infected. Already the fi rst
cases and deaths were being reported outside China, in Japan,
South Korea, and Thailand. With Wuhan the epicenter of the viral
outbreak, many experts say Chinese offi cials missed the chance
to limit the global spread of COVID-19. In March 2020 a research
report from data experts at the United Kingdom’s University of
Southampton found that “if interventions in the country could
have been conducted one week, two weeks, or three weeks ear-
lier, cases could have been reduced by 66 percent, 86 percent
and 95 percent respectively—signifi cantly limiting the geographi-
cal spread of the disease.” China has rejected criticism of its re-
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action, claiming to have acted swiftly and responsibly.

Speculation About the Virus’s Origin
As medical experts around the world became aware of the novel
coronavirus, they speculated about how it fi rst arose in humans.
They believed details on its origin could hold clues about how to
fi ght it. Researchers in China noted how several of the fi rst docu-

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