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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that in the fall of 2019, several researchers at the secret Wuhan lab fell ill with Covid-19. He announced data from US intelligence that they had worked in the laboratory with 96% identical bat viruses since at least 2016.
Pompeo’s speech was addressed to experts from the World Health Organization who arrived in China this week to investigate the causes of the coronavirus pandemic. Researchers should also visit the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Beijing authorities say there is no evidence that the virus originated on their territory. The Chinese government points to data from Italy that in September 2019 were infected with the new coronavirus.
However, the head of the US State Department says that a sample of the RaTG13 virus, which was isolated from a bat in a cave in Yunnan province in 2013, was kept in the Chinese laboratory. At the same time, several miners working in the cave died of a disease that had symptoms similar to the SARS epidemic in 2003.
The first cases of unexplained SARS in Wuhan were reported in late 2019 and the city lockdown was imposed three weeks later.
Pompeo says that since at least 2016, the institute has studied the RaTG13 coronavirus, which is more than 96% identical to COVID-19. The Institute of Virology has not reported possible “experiments to increase the infectivity or lethality” of the virus. According to Pompeo, the Wuhan lab is linked to the military.
“Although the Wuhan Institute of Virology presents itself as a civilian site, it is cooperating with the Chinese military,” the US secretary of state said.
“The COVID-19 pandemic could have been prevented. Any responsible country would have invited global health experts to Wuhan within days of its outbreak,” Pompeo said. He called for “WHO experts to have access to all facilities, laboratory data, personnel, witnesses and whistleblowers” in China.
So far, experts have dismissed all speculation that the virus may have been artificially created in a laboratory. Doubts that a lab may have removed the virus due to security breaches have not been dispelled.
“Incidental infections in laboratories have caused the virus to spread in China, including the spread of SARS in 2004. At that time, eight people became infected and one died,” the US State Department said in a statement.
Laboratory management in Wuhan claims there was “zero” spread of the virus between staff and students.
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