China lab had 3 live strains
The Chinese lab eyed as a potential origin of COVID-19 has admitted having three live strains of bat coronavirus onsite — but insisted the facility was not the source of the pandemic.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has “isolated and obtained some coronaviruses from bats” since 2004, its director, Wang Yanyi, said in an interview that aired on Saturday, according to Agence France-Presse.
“Now we have three strains of live viruses . . . But their highest similarity to SARS-CoV-2 only reaches 79.8 percent,” Wang said, referring to the coronavirus strain that causes the COVID-19 disease.
“It’s an obvious difference,” she said.
Wang rejected claims that the pandemic started in her lab — a notion pushed by President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — as “pure fabrication.”
The lab’s scientists had never “encountered, researched or kept the virus” until it received samples on Dec. 30, when the disease had already quietly taken hold in Wuhan, the contagion’s early epicenter in China, Wang said.
“In fact, like everyone else, we didn’t even know the virus existed,” she said of the new contagion that, as of Sunday, had infected more than 5.3 million and killed more than 340,000 worldwide.
“How could it have leaked from our lab when we never had it?” she asked.
Chinese scientists have always insisted that the coronavirus first emerged at a wet market that was selling live animals in Wuhan.
But US authorities raised suspicions over the lab at the heart of the epicenter — claims that the World Health Organization has insisted are purely “speculative” without evidence being offered.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi claimed on Sunday that US politicians chose to “fabricate rumors” about the origins to “stigmatize China.”
He said China would be “open” to international cooperation to identify the source of the novel coronavirus — but only so long as any investigation is “free of political interference.”