CHINA DENIES REPORTS WUHAN VIROLOGISTS FELL SICK SHORTLY BEFORE FIRST COVID-19 OUTBREAK

Fri 04 June 2021:

Employees at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, whose medical histories were urged to be made public by the chief infectious disease specialist of the US, Anthony Fauci, are not related to the initial phases of COVID-19 spread, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Friday.

The Financial Times reported that Fauci called on China to release the medical records of nine people whose unexplained ailments preceded the pandemic. According to reports, six Chinese miners felt sick after visiting a cave with bats in 2012, three of them died. Scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology visited this cave to take samples from bats. Three researchers in the institute reportedly became sich in November 2019.

“The Wuhan Institute of Virology stated on March 23 this year that the institute had not faced COVID-19 until December 30, 2019. As of today, no employee of the institute has contracted the coronavirus infection,” Wang Wenbin said at a briefing when asked if China is willing to release the medical histories of these nine people.

Recent US media reports have suggested growing evidence the virus could instead have emerged from a lab in Wuhan, perhaps through an accidental leak.

The Times newspaper reported that British intelligence not ruling out the lab leak theory. Commenting on these publications, Wang Wenbin said that scientists, not intelligence services, should be engaged in finding out the origin of COVID-19.

Former President Donald Trump – widely vilified last year when he raised the possibility that Covid-19 came from the Wuhan lab – said on Thursday that Dr Fauci had a lot of questions to answer.

“What did Dr Fauci know about ‘gain of function’ research, and when did he know it?” Mr Trump wrote in a statement.

He added: “China should pay Ten Trillion Dollars to America, and the World, for the death and destruction they have caused!”

In January, international experts traveled to Wuhan where they examined a laboratory, hospitals, and markets for clues to the origin of SARS-CoV-2. The expert mission of the WHO then compiled a report, saying that a leak of the new coronavirus from a laboratory in Wuhan was very unlikely.

The report, released in March, said that the new virus was most likely transmitted to humans from bats through an intermediary host. After the publication, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that China had withheld data from international experts during their visit to the Chinese city of Wuhan, where SARS-CoV-2 is believed to have started circulating in November 2019.

The United States and thirteen other nations have jointly expressed their concerns over the WHO report, saying that it was late in coming and failed to include complete data and samples.

Covid-19 is known to have infected some 172 million people, killing more than 3.5 million.

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