U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating the possibility that the Covid-19 virus originated in a virology institute in the Chinese city of Wuhan, and not on the market in the same city. Live animals were traded on that market.
“We know that the virus is from Wuhan and that the institute is a few miles from the market,” said Minister Pompeo in an interview with Fox News. “The Chinese government needs to clarify.”
Shortly before, President Trump responded to reports in the U.S. media that intelligence agencies are investigating the role the Institute may have played. “We are thoroughly investigating the terrible situation that has arisen,” said Trump.
Risky research
The Washington Post wrote Tuesday that U.S. diplomats visited the institute in Wuhan multiple times in 2018. They reported to Washington twice that dangerous studies of coronaviruses in bats were being conducted and security measures were inadequate. One of those reports said that the virus could spread to humans and that it could lead to a pandemic, just as it had happened with the SARS virus in 2003.
The institute already worked with a laboratory from the University of Texas. The diplomats wrote that the institute in Wuhan had to get additional aid from the US because it was conducting important but also dangerous research. The aim of the study was to prevent a new SARS-like pandemic. There was no additional help to improve security measures.
Accidentally infected
It is now being investigated whether one or more employees of the institute have become infected during their work and have released the virus.
The Washington Post points to an article in The Lancet medical journal in January that the first known covid-19 patient has not been on the market in Wuhan, and neither has more than a third of the first group of patients studied. In addition, according to that study, no bats were sold on the Wuhan market.
Fox News learned from anonymous sources that the Chinese government has identified the market in Wuhan as the source of the outbreak to prevent the institute from being blamed.
China denies
The Chinese government previously denied that the laboratory had anything to do with the outbreak, and it does now. The Chinese Foreign Ministry pointed out this morning that the World Health Organization has repeatedly said that the new coronavirus was not “made” in a laboratory. Nothing was said about an infection by accident.
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