CHINA COVID BOMBSHELL
Researcher’s gene map was deleted
A Chinese researcher isolated and mapped out COVID-19 — and submitted it to a US-run database — at least two weeks before Beijing officially identified the virus that has claimed more than 3 million lives worldwide, according to bombshell new documents.
The documents, obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services by House Republicans and first reported by The Wall Street Journal, show virologist Dr. Lili Ren uploaded nearly the entire sequence of COVID-19’s structure to a US government-run database on Dec. 28, 2019.
Her work was nearly identical to what Beijing eventually presented to the World Health Organization Jan. 11, 2020, when the virus had already spread across the world, according to the documents obtained by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The extra two weeks could have proven pivotal to the global response to the pandemic and the development of COVID-19 vaccines as scientists were racing to understand the virus in late 2019 and early 2020.
Ren, of the Institute of Pathogen Biology at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing, attempted to publish information on the virus to GenBank, operated by the National Institutes of Health.
Never published
Her work, however, was never published on the site, but rather deleted after she failed to respond to technical issues with her submission — issues that did not pertain to the science backing her work, the documents state.
Ren is also notably a sub-grantee of the controversial nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance. The New York-based organization helped fund coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese lab which has long been scrutinized as the possible origin of COVID-19.
EcoHealth directed funds from grants it received from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to the Wuhan lab, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.
Dr. Anthony Fauci was the director of NIAID during the pandemic and has received widespread criticism over his handling of the crisis. He retired in December 2022.
Ren did not respond to The Post’s request for comment on her submission to GenBank.
The documents revealing the early COVID-19 sequencing were released after the House Energy and Commerce Committee threatened to subpoena HHS.
The House committee noted that Ren’s case is the earliest known instance of a Chinese researcher’s early work on COVID sequencing being deleted after having been submitted to GenBank, suggesting interference from Beijing.
Committee Chairs Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said the incident highlights the need to probe further into what Chinese and US health officials knew in the early days of the pandemic.
‘Cannot trust CCP facts’
“This significant discovery further underscores why we cannot trust any of the so-called ‘facts’ or data provided by the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] and calls into serious question the legitimacy of any scientific theories based on such information,” the lawmakers said in a statement.
“The American people deserve to know the truth about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and our investigation has uncovered numerous causes for concern, including how taxpayers’ dollars are spent, how our government’s public health agencies operate, and the need for more oversight into research grants to foreign scientists,” they added.
“The documents released today are consistent with testimony uncovered by the Select Subcommittee and the published work of Dr. Jeremy Farrar,” a rep for the House panel investigating the coronavirus pandemic told The Post.
Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, told The Post that the information the committee obtained had been in the public domain since February 2020, when the Chinese paper Caixin published an article about it, which was taken down shortly afterward.
‘It is misfeasance’
“It is of course misfeasance — actionable misfeasance — that the NIH has withheld this information from Congress for months,” Ebright told The Post.
“Former NIH Director [Francis] Collins and former Acting NIH Director [Lawrence] Tabak need to be held accountable for their misfeasance, with, at minimum, forfeiture of federal positions and federal pensions,” he added.
“This latest revelation by Rep. McMorris Rodgers that HHS had a nearly complete viral sequence in December 2019, weeks earlier than previously claimed, is just the latest example of HHS’s attempts to prevent the public from fully understanding where COVID-19 originated,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told The Post.
“In September 2023, I revealed that NIAID official Dr. Ping Chen reported on safety concerns at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in November 2017. HHS continues to refuse to provide me with a fully unredacted version of Dr. Chen’s report and make her available for an interview. The American people deserve the complete truth about the origins COVID-19.”
The Chinese Embassy did not comment on the incident but defended China’s response to the pandemic and the information it presented to the world.
“China has kept refining our COVID response based on science to make it more targeted,” an embassy spokesperson told the Journal. “China’s COVID response policies are science-based, effective, and consistent with China’s national realities. They can stand the test of history.”