In a detailed article titled 'The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora's box at Wuhan' published in the prestigious Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists early this month, noted British science writer, editor and author Nicholas Wade raised several questions on the origin of the novel coronavirus that has disrupted lives the world over for more than a year and caused over three million deaths and wrecked global economies. Zhao reiterated China's assertions that the US should open up its bio-lab at Fort Detrick in Maryland and 200 other such labs for WHO experts visits as China did. China asserts that the COVID-19 broke out in different places in the world and China only reported the virus first. The lab has not been aware of this situation, and I don't even know where such information came from.'' Beijing has also been vehemently denying that the coronavirus broke out in Wuhan and took exception to Trump's reference to it as "China virus" or "Wuhan virus". ''I've read it, it's a complete lie,'' Yuan said. Zhao sought to refute the WSJ report citing the observations of the joint expert group of China and the World Health Organisation (WHO) who visited Wuhan, that it is extremely unlikely coronavirus has escaped from the bio lab.Īlso Yuan Zhiming, director of the WIV, told the state-run Global Times that the WSJ report is an "outright lie that came from nowhere". ''Therefore, the report you mentioned that three people at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill is totally untrue,'' he said. ''As a matter of fact, the WIV had not been exposed to Covid-19 before December 30, 2019, and a 'zero-infection' record is kept among its staff and graduate students so far,'' Zhao said in updated comments on the Foreign Ministry website. What it didn't tell you was exactly why they got sick," he said, referring to the researchers.Ĭhina, however, denied the WSJ report on Monday, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian saying the WIV released a statement on March 23 that made it clear that there were zero COVID-19 infections at the institute. "The information that we had coming from the various sources was of exquisite quality.
The paper said that current and former officials familiar with the intelligence about the lab researchers expressed differing views about the strength of the supporting evidence, with one person saying it was provided by an international partner and was potentially significant but still in need of further investigation and additional corroboration.Īnother person described intelligence as stronger. The disclosure of the number of Chinese researchers, the timing of their illnesses and their hospital visits come on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization's decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into Covid-19's origins. ''Three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care," the paper said. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is near the outbreak's known epicentre of Huanan Seafood Market in central China's Wuhan city, where the virus first emerged in late 2019 and became a pandemic.įormer US president Donald Trump was among those who supported the theory that the virus might have escaped from a bio lab in China. The origins of the COVID-19 remain a widely debated topic, with some scientists and politicians maintaining that the possibility of a lab leak of the deadly virus exists. The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers at the Wuhan lab, a center for the study of coronaviruses and other pathogens, became sick in autumn 2019 ''with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness,'' the Wall Street Journal reported.
#DID PEOPLE OR NATURE OPEN PANDORAS BOX AT WUHAN FULL#
Three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology sought hospital care in November 2019, weeks before Beijing disclosed the COVID-19 pandemic, a US media report said, citing a previously undisclosed American intelligence document that could add weight to growing calls for a full scale probe of whether the coronavirus may have escaped from China's top bio lab.
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