Cable shows US was worried about Wuhan virus lab

WASHINGTON: The United States has released an internal diplomatic cable that had triggered speculation among officials of the Trump administration that the Covid-19 outbreak might have started because of an accident at a virology lab in Wuhan.

Officials of the US embassy in China, who wrote this cable in January 2018 after a visit to the Wuhan facility, had raised concerns in the state department cable about “serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory”.

Though the lab in Wuhan could study SARS-like coronaviruses extracted from bats, it needed the permission of designated authority to research strains that could infect humans, officials wrote in the cable, whose release was secured by The Washington Post this week through a lawsuit.

The cable, however, did not prove if the new coronavirus indeed came from the Wuhan facility. “I don’t see any evidence to support the idea that this was released deliberately or inadvertently,” Ian Lipkin, the director of Columbia University’s Center for Infection and Immunity, told The Washington Post after being being made aware of the content of the cable. “You can’t just say someone is guilty of accidentally releasing a virus. You have to prove it.”

In recent days, the Trump administration hasn’t pushed the Wuhan lab origin theory much, but it has continued to blame China for the pandemic. Both US President Donald Trump and secretary of state Mike Pompeo have called the pathogen “Chinese virus” and “Wuhan virus”.

Covid-19 infections, meantime, are soaring in the United States, with nearly 78,000 new cases reported in the last 24 hours and 843 new deaths. Texas, Florida, Arizona and other southern states are the worst hit. ICUs are running to full capacity in some of the worst affected counties, and, in a repeat of the grim situation in New York some weeks ago, refrigerated trucks are being used to store bodies because of overwhelmed morgues.

Americans debated mask mandates and the reopening of schools as the country’s top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci and Trump yet again sparred, this time over the need to use masks.

While Fauci urged political leaders to “be as forceful as possible in getting your citizenry to wear masks”, Trump said he didn’t believe in issuing a nationwide mask mandate.