A previously undisclosed report expanding on a State Department fact sheet issued by the Trump administration confirms that three workers from the controversial Wuhan Institute of Virology in China became severely sick and sought hospital care in November of 2019.
This revelation brings severe doubt to the Chinese authorities’ official theory of the origin of COVID-19, claiming the virus came from Wuhan’s wet market.
The first confirmed case of COVID-19 by Chinese authorities was identified on Dec. 8, 2019, weeks after the virology workers fell severely ill.
A growing body of evidence now points to the possibility that COVID-19 emerged in a Chinese lab, more precisely in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The Institute’s was home to complex research on coronaviruses.
Two years before COVID-19 emerged, U.S. embassy officials sent two official warnings back to Washington, raising the alarm about the lab’s inadequate safety protocols and risky research projects on bat coronaviruses.
According to David Asher, a former U.S. State Department official who worked on a task force to determine the origins of COVID-19, the mysterious illnesses among employees of the Wuhan Institute of Virology could represent the “first known cluster”.
“I’m very doubtful that three people in highly protected circumstances in a level three laboratory working on coronaviruses would all get sick with influenza that put them in the hospital or in severe conditions all in the same week, and it didn’t have anything to do with the coronavirus,” Asher added.
Scientists across the world are increasingly calling for a thorough and exhaustive investigation into the lab origin theory. It is unclear whether the World Health Organization will seek a full investigation into the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but Chinese authorities are likely to avoid cooperation and manipulate key evidence.
COVID-19 had caused the death of 3.46 million individuals and contaminated 167 million. The virus has caused unprecedented economical and social damages to the world.
