Wuhan lab staff got virus first, claims US
The US claimed yesterday that staff at a Chinese virology laboratory became sick with a Covid-like illness in autumn 2019, months before the coronavirus spread widely from Wuhan.
In a long-awaited document from the State Department, the Trump administration called for an investigation as it published dubious accusations that a possible ‘‘laboratory accident’’ at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) may be the source of the global pandemic.
The claims were dismissed by analysts who insist the disease came from a naturally occurring event.
In a statement on Saturday claiming to reveal ‘‘undisclosed information’’, the State Department said it ‘‘has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case, with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illnesses.’’
The statement also said that the lab had been carrying out research on a bat coronavirus similar to the Sars-CoV-2 strain that spread globally and that the lab had collaborated with China’s military on publications and secret projects.
Some experts were nonplussed by the announcement. ‘‘Zero details given,’’ noted Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at Scripps Research, rating the statement as ‘‘an F’’. The fact that Wuhan was home to the world’s leading coronavirus research facility before it became known as ground zero for the pandemic has led to speculation that the virus could have originated in the lab.
While Pompeo’s statement offered little beyond insinuation, the State Department was on firmer ground when it accused the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of preventing an investigation into the pandemic’s origin.
‘‘The CCP has prevented independent journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from interviewing researchers at the WIV,’’ it said. The WHO team that travelled to China found itself at the centre of a propaganda battle, caught between a Chinese government determined to extol its leadership in fighting the virus and an outgoing US administration eager to shift blame from its own contentious pandemic response.
Landing in Wuhan after months of delay, the 13 members of the WHO team were whisked away for two weeks’ quarantine before their fraught task of attempting to identify the origins of the virus from which two million have died.
The CCP has sought to reshape the narrative about where and when the pandemic began, while covering up early missteps which may have facilitated its global spread.
In the US, where more than 393,000 Americans have died, President Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to blame Beijing for what he calls the Chinese virus.
Ever since the outbreak, Chinese authorities have attempted to control the narrative over the origins of the pandemic. – Telegraph Group