"Religious Infiltration/Islamist Infiltration" in Quebec Public Schools

"Clearly there is a discomfort in intervening or discussing these religious questions very frankly and for me, this is not unrelated to the very Canadian anti-secularism discourse."

"[Quebec is facing a case of] ideological infiltration, anti-secularism and anti-Bill 21 activism."

"The federal government is truly the champion of defamation of Quebec's secularism, which is no stranger to the woke movement that presents secularism as a form of racism when it is actually a form of living together in peace."

"[Quebec must do more in terms of secularism in our schools to protect children] from all religious proselytism [and] ensure the duty of neutrality of teachers, which must be applied to all manifestations of religious beliefs, regardless of religion."

Parti Quebecois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon

 

"Obviously, if it comes out that there was a concerted effort to conspire, to impose your own religious values on others or on a public institution, of course that's unacceptable. But the report doesn't conclude that."

"Being visibly Muslim is seen somehow as threatening. That's a real social problem. And politicians should not be pandering or exacerbating fears around diversity."

Stephen Brown, CEO, National Council of Canadian Muslims 

"Our first concern must be the children. As a government, our first responsibility is to clean up this school and protect the children."

"There’s something very disturbing in this case, this attempt by a group of teachers to introduce Islamist religious concepts into a public school."

"In Quebec, we decided a long time ago to take religion out of public schools. We’ll never go back on that decision."

"We need all Quebecers to denounce these situations without fear of intimidation. The whole of Quebec must defend the choice of secularism in our public institutions. Let’s not be afraid."

Quebec Premier Francois Legault 

Eleven teachers at Bedford elementary school were suspended this past weekend for allegedly creating a toxic environment since 2016. (Ivanoh Demers/Radio-Canada

 

It appears that an untoward situation pertains; a group of teachers at a Montreal public elementary school has been ignoring the curriculum, turning instead to their conception of how subjects of their choosing should be taught to students in an education-hostile environment that they have transformed into an opportunity to teach students non-typical subjects with an Islamist bent, which has only recently been reported in the news, evidently because other teachers, along with students, have been intimidated to the point where they fear a violent backlash, restraining them from divulging the volatile and fraught situation.

The Quebec Ministry of Education published a report following a lengthy investigation, concluding that the dominant group of teachers was "mainly composed of people of Maghrebi origin", adding "although the majority clan is mainly composed of people of Maghrebi (North African) origin, people of other origins are also associated with it. Likewise, the minority clan is also partly composed of individuals of Maghrebi origin, including some of the strongest opposition to the majority clan." The group of problematic teachers are reported to frequent attendance at local mosque.

"The clans present different visions and understandings of education, pedagogy and relations with students", according to the report. One group of like ethnic/cultural/religious origins has protested against the majority group's educational ethos as inappropriate to their current setting in Montreal. The ruling clique aggressively pursues its own teaching methods and agenda separate and apart from the approved curricula. The result is a toxic, challenged environment, felt by the students and leading them to under-perform academically.

The situation runs counter to the State Secularism Act, known as Bill 21, adopted in 2019 by the National Assembly, to prohibit the wearing of religious symbols by those in positions of authority inclusive of teachers and principals of public elementary and secondary schools in the province. Montreal's Bedford School was the model identified as having a "toxic environment" which led to the Education Ministry's investigation and subsequent report on the situation.

Debates between teachers revolve around the use of foreign languages in common areas of public schools, acts of violence and humiliation against children while disciplining them, and opposing methodologies of teaching, which led to the suspension of eleven teachers during the time of the investigation. The report from the Quebec Ministry of Education points to a "dominant clan" comprised of North African teachers attempting to indoctrinate children while maintaining a "clan" dynamic among teaching staff, ongoing since 2017. 

The teaching of science, ethics and sex education was rejected by some teachers who instead used traditional rigid methods, some shouting at students as a form of discipline. A teacher was mentioned in the report in "an act of violence ... reported to the administration when a teacher allegedly closed the door to his classroom with a brutal gesture while one of his students had her fingers in the door frame". Rescued by another individual, from having her fingers crushed between the closing door and the door frame.

According to investigators, the local Muslim community exerted a "strong influence" within the Bedford school, where some teachers prayed in their free time in classrooms, performed ablutions in community bathrooms. Occasionally these performances were carried out in the presence of students. The spokesman for the National Council of Canadian Muslims states that should the politicians be unable to conclusively prove people are plotting to impose their ideology on a public institution prior to the completion of an independent investigation "it reeks of political opportunism".

It appears that other examples have emerged -- at Jewish schools and Catholic schools -- related to religious indoctrination. The difference, of course, being that these are schools independent of the public school system, with their own particular curricula. Students in attendance at parochial Jewish schools are there because their parents were interested in having them achieve an education comparable with that of the public schools, but overlaid with Judaic concepts and values. The same is true of the Catholic school system.

Parents of children attending public schools, particularly in a province that emphasizes secularism, anticipate that their children will receive an education compatible with a non-religious observance. It has been, in fact, some Muslim parents themselves, among others, who have been alarmed that their children are being exposed to a rigid form of Islamic overlay in the public system where teachers refuse to teach some of the subjects that will be elemental to a fully rounded education in Canadian society.

Controversially and ironically, it is in other provinces, particularly Ontario, where school boards and principals and teaching staff of some schools have contrived to have students exposed to Islam. More troubling has been the penchant for some among them to espouse distinctly un-Canadian views of championing Palestinian terrorist groups while demonizing the state of Israel, and in the process discriminating against Jewish students in a toxic mix of woke, DEI, Critical Race Theory and antisemitism.

Rally outside of the Toronto & District School Board headquarters on Yonge Street, Tuesday Sept. 24, 2024. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post

"The issue here is how to manage our schools to make room for all families who have very different perspectives on this subject."

"And the only solution is to not let religion enter our school system."

"So I can't help but talk about religion in the school system."

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon

Canadian Indigenous Zionists

"Our children and youth, the students of the TDSB [Toronto and District School Board], are our much welcomed and loved treaty partners. They are not colonizers. The true colonizers are the adults who hijacked the field trip and wickedly co-opted our child and youth treaty partners to facilitate their anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian demonstration -- to facilitate hate."

"A thorough investigation is needed into the events of September 18. The investigation cannot be conducted by the TDSB, which has shown itself to be demonstrably unfit to do so on so many levels."

"What the TDSB did to children on September 18 is despicable and borders on criminal. It dishonours the very concept of reconciliation and the Seven Sacred Teachings."

"Together we must ensure that such politically ideologically-driven events never happen again."

The Honourable Harry S LaForme, Anishinaabe, Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation

Karen Restoule, Anishanaabe-Kwe, Dokis First Nation

Dr. Mark S. Dockstator, Onyota'd:ka, Oneida Nation of the Thames

Photo by Tristan Sosteric on Unsplash

When hundreds of school children from 15 schools of the Toronto District School Board were taken by their teachers to a field trip on September 18, their parents were advised that the trip's purpose was to expose the students to yet another facet of Canada's ill-treatment of its First Nations; in this instance generations of Indigenous Canadians exposed to mercury contamination at Grassy Narrows, calling out for attention and long-ignored remediation.

 

Parents were informed that the trip would represent a measure to instill in students a sense of human rights so sorely lacking historically in Canada's relations with its First Nations populations. This event was meant to raise public awareness in "efforts to address mercury contamination and advocate for their rights regarding mining and logging activities within their territory". Parents were advised the students' presence would be to "observe and learn from the presentations and discussions".  

When parents were informed that their children preparing for the outing should wear blue shirts it is likely that none among them would have suspected that blue shirts would identify the students as 'colonial' usurpers of Indigenous land, and that the colour blue had another linkage, reflecting the colour of the Israeli flag; the ultimate 'colonialists', ostensibly depriving Palestinians of land they claimed as their own despite that Israel sits on its own ancestral heritage geography.

In effect, the Grassy Narrows River Run Rally became a focal point for anti-Israel-pro-Palestinian demonstrators; an ideologically hostile group that holds Israel accountable for a conflict forced upon the Jewish state by Palestinian terrorists who almost a year ago had carried out a wholesale atrocity of sadistically savage rape, torture, and mass murder, finally spiriting away as hostages 240 Israeli infants and children, women and men for the ransom of prisoner exchanges.

The demonstrators, many of whom were teachers with the school board who connived with others to turn attention away from Indigenous suffering to transform the event into one where Palestinian aggrieved 'victimhood' carried the day. Children are wont to obey their teachers and this event saw them being coerced to chant the Palestinian mantras of 'Zionist genocide' and 'From the river to the sea Palestine will be free'; essentially calling for the destruction of Israel.

Indigenous leaders were not amused at the turn this event took. The leaders listed above pointed out in their objections to the atrocious shoving aside of Indigenous historical injustice and the lack of government policies to adequately address them, that the teachers and other adults involved in this hijacking of a critically important Indigenous event viewed the introduction of an anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian crusade as injurious to their own cause. 

"Zionism does not kill -- as the stickers handed out to students at the 'rally' declared; extremism does. Chants of 'Turtle Island to Lebanon, Israel will be gone' by anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian demonstrators promotes terrorism", they pointed out.

Indigenous values, they pointed out with justifiable indignation, "do not align with pro-terror and hateful messages. They are anathema to the Seven Sacred Teachings of Indigenous people. These values are found in Treaties of Peace and Friendship, which are grounded in the Seven Sacred Teachings -- Love, Respect, Courage, Honesty, Wisdom, Humility and Truth", they pointed out.

Their call for an independent investigation into the event co-opting, humiliating and denying justice to the people of Grassy Narrows, is critical. Without such an investigation thoroughly examining the event, its participants, the role of the Toronto and District School Board, the need to hold the board and the teaching staff involved to account, and to take steps to cleanse the largest school board in Canada of their malign, inappropriate and harmful agenda is required, to re-build failed trust with the Canadian public.

Parents and others protest after a Toronto school trip that was supposed to teach students about mercury poisoning at Grassy Narrows was hijacked by anti-Israel protesters and teachers failed to intervene. Photo by Peter J. Thompson / National Post

Peter Daszak (right), Thea Fischer (left), and other members of the WHO team investigating the origins of covid-19 arrive at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China's central Hubei province.

 

"We would ask that we separate the science from the politics, and let us get on with finding the answers that we need in a proper, positive atmosphere."

"This whole process is being poisoned by politics."

WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan 

 

"The technical team will prepare a proposal for the next studies that will need to be carried out and will present that to the director-general."

"He will then work with member states about the next steps. There is no timeline."

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib

 

"[The first phase of the WHO expert panel study was] insufficient and inconclusive. There is a need for a] timely, transparent, evidence-based and expert-led Phase 2 study, including in the People's Republic of China."

"[There is a need for access for independent experts to] complete, original data and samples [relevant to the source of the virus and early stages of the outbreak]."

"We appreciate the WHO's stated commitment to move forward with Phase 2 of the COVID-19 origins study, and look forward to an update from Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus."

U.S. Diplomatic Mission, Geneva 

Workers in protective gear carry a bag containing a giant salamander that was reported to have escaped from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020. (Chinatopix via AP)

When the mysterious appearance of a strange pneumonia was discovered in patients admitted to hospitals in Wuhan, China in December of 2019, and soon afterward the virus began spreading outside China's borders, Beijing took exception to the virus, identified as a new coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 being familiarly referred to as the 'Wuhan virus', until the World Health Organization gave it the pandemic name it is now known by, COVID-19.

 

And now that world powers like the United States and Great Britain are leading a drive for a full and deep investigation to discover the origins of the virus causing COVID-19, Beijing continues to deny that suspicions harboured by many in the West that the closed high-security Wuhan Virology Institute laboratory might possibly have loosed the virus accidentally, giving the virus its villainous start on its global predation. Chinese authorities found it much more palatable to insist that the Huanan wet market was a likelier source of the zoonotic when the pathogen made its leap from animal to human.

A growing clamour of voices calling for an independent, unbiased and unchaperoned-by-Chinese-authorities investigation take place to settle the question once and for all; whether the virus origins was a lab-held virus that made its escape or the leap of transmission between species. The WHO assembly was informed by a Chinese representative the official Chinese position that the "China part" of the origin-tracing study "has been completed". In other words: you want to study further, go right ahead but don't expect any cooperation from China. 

 

An interpreter made it clear as well that China was interested in seeing "a global origin-tracing cooperation" -- the translation of which is that China feels the hunt would be best carried out elsewhere than in China. Literally washing its hands of any further investigation, much less the thought that China would further lend itself to another such survey as the original WHO 'independent' investigation when the investigation team was comprised of more Chinese investigators than WHO investigators. 

 

And where the official presence of Chinese authorities at all interviews and site visits constrained a deep and useful investigation, topped off by China's refusal to allow the WHO investigators access to critical records. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian suggested on Wednesday that U.S. sites should be explored -- reflecting Chinese specious 'speculation' the coronavirus could have emerged there. Surely derisively. 

 

Wuhan, a central Chinese city of 11 million people, is where China's first-ever BSL-4-certified laboratory is located. This is a rare classification identifying laboratories meant to work with the world's most lethal pathogens. When it was opened in 2018, the Wuhan Institute of Virology campus was recognized as specializing in coronavirus studies, particularly bat coronaviruses which just happen to represent the likely origin of COVID-19. 

 

The Wuhan Institute is noted for its  unusual housing of the "most comprehensive inventory of sampled bat viruses in the world", according to a January investigation by New York magazine, considered the most rigorous journalistic probe into the COVID-19 potential lab origins. In addition, the lab is understood to engage in gain-of-function experiments, where researchers attempt to supercharge coronaviruses to infect lab mice or human cell samples. Gain-of-function is meant to discover methods of combating the emergence of new viruses from nature, but it is also "exactly the kind of experiment from which a SARS-2-like virus could have emerged", explains a scientific breakdown of COVID-129 origins by The Wire, an Indian news site.

Given these incriminating circumstances, how likely is it that a novel coronavirus linked to bats might have simply by coincidence begun infecting humans who just happened to be located within easy walking distance of a laboratory that incidentally is the world centre for studying highly infectious bat coronaviruses? As a plot of fictitious origins it is hardly believable, as a scenario of real-time circumstances, there is no competition for the actual location of the Virology laboratory escape.

With respect to circumstantial identification of source, American diplomats back in 2018, long before the emergence of the coronavirus causing COVID, visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology and afterward drafted a cable to Washington complete with a heads-up warning of a mishap waiting to happen. Their distinct impression was that the facility's safety and security standards were lax enough to risk sparking a pandemic. According to the Washington Post, which headed the story, "The new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory", read the cable.

Three years later, the revelation that a US. intelligence report that three workers at the Wuhan Institute were hospitalized "with symptoms consistent with both COVID19 and common seasonal illness", came out this week. Another very peculiar coincidence, this time bringing Canada into the narrative, when researcher Xiangguo Qiu, working at the high-security BSL-4 lab at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg was escorted from the facility along with her scientist husband and a Chinese student, all later fired, with no public explanation.

The two-week investigation by the World Health Organization scientific team of ten, joined by a team of 17 Chinese scientists in Wuhan conducted interviews under constant supervision. The researchers spent a mere few hours at the Virology lab where select documents were presented for their examination but no forensic examination of lab protocols was undertaken, only a few supervised meetings with laboratory staff who assured them the institute had witnessed "no disruptions or incidents" at the time of the emergence of COVID-19.

"The lab leak hypothesis has picked up more adherents as time passes and scientists fail to detect a bat or other animal infected with a virus that has covid’s signature genetics. By contrast, within a few months of the start of the 2003 SARS pandemic, scientists found the culprit coronavirus in animals sold in Chinese markets. But samples from 80,000 animals to date have failed to turn up a virus pointing to the origins of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes covid."

"The virus’s ancestors originated in bats in southern China, 600 miles from Wuhan. But covid contains unusual mutations or sequences that made it ideal for infecting people, an issue explored in depth by journalist Nicholas Wade."

"Scientists from the Wuhan Institute have collected thousands of coronavirus specimens from bats and registered them in databases closed to inspection. Could one of those viruses have escaped, perhaps after a “gain of function” experiment that rendered it more dangerous?"

Arthur Allen, KHN

The World Community Has a Right to Know

Lab-leak theories centre on the Wuhan Institute of Virology   Reuters

"[Of the lab-leak theory]: That possibility certainly exists, and I am totally in favour of a full investigation of whether that could have happened."

"[I am] not convinced [the virus originated naturally]."

Dr.Anthony Fauci, U.S. President Biden's chief medical adviser   

 

"From day one China has been engaged in a massive cover-up."

"As the evidence for the lab-leak hypothesis grows, we should be demanding the full investigation of all origin hypotheses that's required."

Jamie Metzl, a fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council 

 

"We do need to be a bit patient but we also need to be diplomatic."

"We can't do this without support from China. It needs to be a no-blame environment."

Prof Dale Fisher, Singapore's National University Hospital 

"I've read it, [report released by the Washington Post calling into question when and how the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged] it's a complete lie."

"Those claims are groundless. The lab has not been aware of this situation, and I don't even know where such information came from."

Yuan Zhiming, director, Wuhan National Biosafety Lab, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Wuhan, China

The story in the Wall Street Journal claims that three laboratory workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November of 2019, and were admitted to hospital for treatment. A month later, China advised the World Health Organization of the sudden appearance of a zoonotic, a virus transmitted from animal to human, and that authorities in China felt confident the virus had erupted in a fresh food market where wild animals were sold and pangolins were the suspected source.

The U.S. intelligence report cited by the paper had originally been the product of an investigation authorized by then-President Donald Trump who stated  his determination to get to the bottom of the matter that he suspected was Beijing's lack of openness in alerting the world community of the presence of a galloping new virus with unknown properties but a surprising level of lethality, initially presenting as a new kind of pneumonia. 

It was the newspaper's contention and possible purpose of re-visiting the investigative report and coming away with greater details, that what it revealed could conceivably bring support to the evidence already in question, leading to a broader and deeper investigation into what many in the scientific community suspect -- and many others object to -- that the COVID-19 virus could have been a lab escapee.

What is undeniable unless new information arises, is that the first cases of a strange new pneumonia were being reported toward the end of December 2019 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan where coincidentally two high-security laboratories for the study of viruses were located. One laboratory had undertaken studies of viruses collected from bats in caves and theorized that the bats had infected pangolins and the pangolins carried the virus with them when they were trapped for sale at the live animal market in Wuhan.

 

Although rumours have circulated widely that the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 was not a zoonotic that naturally occurred, infecting people who had come in contact with a vector at the Wuhan market, but rather a laboratory-produced virus and that inept, insecure methods led to its escape, China has steadfastly denied any such allegations. Claiming instead that the lab theory was unproven and nonsensical and simply represented U.S. paranoia.

 

Instead Chinese authorities point to the possibility that the virus may very well not have originated in China, or Wuhan, at all, and was imported with frozen food from some other geographic location. Wildlife trading too was cited as a source, as well as a circulating virus that had emerged elsewhere and found its way to China by some unsuspected means. China's foreign ministry rejected the claim that three lab workers had been hospitalized, characterizing it as a lie.

 

The World Health Organization, which had sent an independent team of researchers to Wuhan months ago to undertake a detailed investigation, now entertains thought of another investigation, this time perhaps without Chinese authorities' interference, although without Beijing's approval for yet another group of scientists arriving in Wuhan there can be no follow-up of the original which declared its joint opinion that no lab escape of a virus was a likely explanation for the pandemic.

 

That opinion was reached despite that there were no unescorted interviews permitted where the investigators could privately, without interference and the presence of Chinese authorities, closely question someone who might have information critical to the investigation, nor were the investigators permitted to see collected data directly relevant to the more immediate Chinese investigation of the market where purportedly the outbreak was traced to.

 

According to Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for WHO, the organization's technical teams were currently making decisions on whether to proceed further and if so, how. Further study was obviously required into the role of animal markets, as well as the hypothesis of a lab leak. The issue, after all, is that of a lethal, minuscule, unseen pathogen seeking out new hosts, invading body cells and replicating wildly. A virus that has in the space of a year-and-a-half killed three and a half million people worldwide.  

Knowing its true origins could help medical science more fully understand the nature of the pathogen and how best to control it. It could also lead to techniques of detection and deterrence that could help avoid future such global pandemics. As well as teach both the global medical community and governments how best to anticipate new and perhaps even more deadly invasions of viruses from wild animal to humanity.

 

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was linked to early Covid cases   Getty Images

 

  

Origins of COVID Under WHO Investigation in China

"My understanding is in fact there is no limit in accessing information we might need for the team."

"We will see. We are not in China yet."

Hung Nguyen, Vietnamese biologist

"What we would like to do with the international team and counterparts in China is to go back in the Wuhan environment, re-interview in-depth the initial cases, try to find other cases that were not detected at that time and try to see if we can push back the history of the first cases."

Peter Ben Embarek, WHO expert on animal diseases crossing species barrier

 

"We are looking for the answers here that may save us in future — not culprits and not people to blame."

"[The WHO is willing to go] anywhere and everywhere."

World Health Organization top emergency expert, Mike Ryan 

 

"At this stage what I think we need is a very open mind when trying to step back into the events that led eventually to this pandemic."

Marion Koopmans, virologist, Erasmus University Medical Center, Netherlands 

 

A worker in protective coverings directs members of the World Health Organization team on their arrival at the airport in Wuhan, in central China's Hubei province, on Thursday. (Ng Han Guan/The Associated Press)

An earlier attempt by WHO experts who set out to investigate the origins, extent and the host country's initial realization they were dealing with a novel coronavirus and the information they shared with the World Health Organization, resulted in a disappointing setback when members of the team were denied authorization by China to enter the country to fulfill the function they were dispatched by the world  health body to accomplish. At the time WHO chief Tetros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had voiced his disappointment and China responded that there had been a 'misunderstanding'.

 

That misunderstanding appears now to have been settled and the WHO team of expert investigators set off once again -- comprised of global scientists, experts in their field -- to investigate the novel coronavirus origins, planning to spend a month in the city of Wuhan. Just having arrived now, their first two weeks will be spent in quarantine. Before their arrival, Hung Nguyen, speaking via video-call from Singapore said the ten-member team did not expect to encounter any restrictions to their movements nor access to vital investigation sites.

 

They were preparing at that point to fly from Singapore to Wuhan. The end result of their investigation would presumably put to rest the skepticism voiced by the governments of the United States and Australia, to mention several of the more prominent voices demanding answers of Beijing. China has been accused of screening the extent of the initial outbreak leading to calls for a transparent investigation led by the WHO in the wake of criticisms of the terms by which experts in China conducted their research during the SARS-CoV-2 virus's initial entrance. 

The group arrived late in the morning from Singapore and was expected to head into two weeks of quarantine. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Dr.Hung explained in a media interview that the WHO team  had conducted regular virtual meetings for discussions with their Chinese virus-expert counterparts, taking place over the months before the team embarked on their trip to China. Once their period of quarantine had lapsed, the team planned to spend the following two weeks in interviews with people from research institutes, hospitals and from the seafood market in Wuhan where the pathogen was believed to have first emerged and began its spread, eventually appearing everywhere across the globe.

Dr.Hung's expertise is in the field of food safety risks arising from wet markets, whose existence is common throughout Asia and parts of Africa. He is himself based in Kenya, and he was chosen to take part in the investigative mission taking advantage of his training and experience. China has pushed back against international criticism as the crucible of yet another malignant virus that managed to leap the species gap between animals and humans; bats and pangolins considered to be vectors. Pangolins happen to be the most trafficked wild-animal species found in wet markets.

China has its own narrative of the novel coronavirus origins; that it was brought to China, not that it originated in China. Its state media has been expressing and promulgating a home-grown narrative of the virus being present in imported frozen food packaging from abroad. That it was present in 2019 in Europe. China being made a scapegoat for something it was not at all responsible for. And China has produced scientific papers featuring those claims. 

 

Before the WHO delegation of experts left for China they underwent COVID-19 tests in their countries of origin and then again in Singapore, all negative, which cleared them all for travel. On arrival in China additional, more complex tests were taken that showed two members of the delegation had bloodstream antibodies to COVID, and they were denied entry. 

 

Nucleic acid tests were negative but two of the members had coronavirus antibodies. "They are being retested for both IgM and IgG antibodies", explained the WHO. "Relevant epidemic prevention and control requirements and regulations will be strictly enforced", noted Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian at a briefing update Thursday responding to a question about the two team members.

People wearing face masks walk in a street market in Wuhan, Hubei province, the epicentre of China's novel coronavirus disease, in April 2020. The WHO team, which landed Thursday, will spend two weeks interviewing people from research institutes, hospitals and the Wuhan seafood market market where the new pathogen is believed to have emerged. (Aly Song/Reuters)