Talk:Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020

January 3
This should be added: China's National Health Commission (NHC), the nation's top health authority, ordered institutions not to publish any information related to the unknown disease, and ordered labs to transfer any samples they had to designated testing institutions, or to destroy them. The order did not specify any designated testing institutions.

JustStalin (talk) 19:14, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 09:51, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
 * SARS-CoV-2 without background.png

Semi-protected edit request on 25 August 2021
In the 5 January section, please add at least a sentence about WHO's Disease Outbreak News describing the Wuhan cluster to the global media for the first time. WHO's own timeline highlights the publication as follows: "WHO issued its first Disease Outbreak News report. This is a public, web-based platform for the publication of technical information addressed to the scientific and public health communities, as well as global media. The report contained information about the number of cases and their clinical status; details about the Wuhan national authority's response measures; and WHO's risk assessment and advice on public health measures. It advised that 'WHO's recommendations on public health measures and surveillance of influenza and severe acute respiratory infections still apply.' "

For WP:PROPORTION with the rest of our Wikipedia timeline, we should probably just insert a brief summary sentence & reference like the following, at the end of the 5 January section:
 * Disease Outbreak News was WHO's first international media report summarizing details of the Wuhan outbreak.

Many thanks — 24.191.101.223 (talk) 06:11, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 13:27, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Looks good, thanks. —24.191.101.223 (talk) 08:22, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 March 2023 - January 10/11 events
There has been some muddling of the initial timeline of the genome release around January 10.

The first posting was to Virological.org, and this is supported by multiple the contemporary references cited in this section for a different statement: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/china-releases-genetic-data-new-coronavirus-now-deadly, https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/thailand-finds-wuhan-novel-coronavirus-traveler-china

An edit in 2021 moved this claim down as it was "unsourced".

This timeline has been source of dispute in recent days: https://www.science.org/content/article/dispute-simmers-over-who-first-shared-sars-cov-2-s-genome

This reference can be removed as it doesn't support any statements here: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/08/health/china-wuhan-pneumonia-virus-intl-hnk/index.html

The only citation that supports "GISAID first" is "BusinessWorld" which is not a source of merit for this topic: https://www.bworldonline.com/health/2021/02/24/346451/no-one-is-safe-unless-everyone-is-safe/

GISAID sequences were posted shortly thereafter, but were not first. DakkonA (talk) 04:02, 30 March 2023 (UTC)


 * So the literal change would be:
 * The gene sequencing data of the isolated 2019-nCoV, a virus from the same family as the SARS coronavirus, was posted on Virological.org by researchers from Fudan University, Shanghai.
 * The same day, Public Health England issued its guidance.
 * Shortly thereafter, three genetic sequences of the isolated novel coronavirus from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, one from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and one from Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan were posted to the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) portal. DakkonA (talk) 04:09, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The science.org link could also be added as a source, but I'm not sure how to code it. DakkonA (talk) 04:10, 30 March 2023 (UTC)


 * ✅ Snowmanonahoe (talk) 23:02, 2 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear @Snowmanonahoe, I support this edit request. Unfortunately, I think there may have been a mixup when you applied the edit. Now it is a bit of a mess. The first sentence should be removed (mentioning upload to GISAID. Also, the whole section should be moved to 11 January, as that is when the sequences were published on virological AncientWalrus (talk) 20:57, 3 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Do you think that the GISAID info should be moved to 12 January per the Science source? GISAID, various information sources suggest, didn’t actually make its first genomes of the new coronavirus public until 12 January 2020. In case you're not aware, this article was edited by a user who appears to have a conflict of interest with respect to GISAID and had tried to push the 10 Jan date in various articles. SmartSE (talk) 11:42, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Smartse Yes I agree, all available evidence points towards sequences being available via GISAID on the 12th of January. I suspect GISAID's bold and weakly supported primacy claim was inserted into other articles on Wikipedia. Would be good to look for it systematically by e.g. searching for "GISAID". AncientWalrus (talk) 15:25, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes I've been trying to look myself. Special:WhatLinksHere/GISAID gives you all the links, but annoyingly that includes all the pages where bioinformatics is transcluded. I could knock something up to exclude those links, but I see that you're already doing it manually. FWIW, I'd suggest being WP:BOLD and removing all the mentions of them being first. SmartSE (talk) 10:30, 23 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I've removed a couple more mentions:  and I can't find any more. SmartSE (talk) 11:22, 23 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I made two edits rephrasing two paragraphs: The first concerns the first time a genome was submitted to a database (5th of January) and the second concerns the first time that genome was shared publicly (10th of January). Those seem to be the two major genome related milestones (availability to at least some researchers, then availability to all researchers/public). Feel free to refactor if you don't think my edits are good. AncientWalrus (talk) 15:48, 22 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Those look good, but I'm still not sure about including GISAID on the 10th - "Shortly thereafter" is vague and imprecise and all the source tells us is that it was sometime between the virological.org upload and the date of publication. I suggest moving that sentence to the 12th and using the Science source in addition to the CIDRAP one. SmartSE (talk) 11:22, 23 May 2023 (UTC)