A report by US Republicans claims that the novel coronavirus was indeed leaked from a Wuhan laboratory in China and pushes for proper investigation into the origins of the deadly pathogen that has so far caused millions of fatalities across the globe in the past two years. The report, ‘The Origins of Covid-19: An Investigation of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’, was released by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Grand Old Party (GOP).
The report made public on Monday is an addition to the one released by the House Foreign Affairs Committee Minority Staff in September 2020 on the origins of the Covid pandemic. The addendum, it says, is based on further investigation. While the September 2020 report was about a possibility that the coronavirus was leaked from the Wuhan lab, the addendum says that “it’s time to completely dismiss the wet market as the source of the outbreak when the preponderance of the evidence proves the virus did leak from the WIV and that it did so sometime before September 12, 2019”.
China and the World Health Organization (WHO) maintain the Covid pandemic most likely originated in a Wuhan wet market.
According to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Centre, 199,099,061 is the current coronavirus case count globally, with 4,239,882 fatalities (at the time of publishing this report). Compare that to China, the country with the first known cases of Covid on November 17, 2019. To date, the country has seen only 105,242 cases and 4,848 deaths. This means the country at the centre of the controversy is largely unaffected, as it claims, and has seen, in fact, an economic comeback and good growth. That naturally raises questions on the origins of the virus.
The US Republican committee report says the coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan lab before September 12, the day when the main public database of the Wuhan Institute of Virology went offline. The following months went into a futile cover-up exercise by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the scientists of the institute. As per the report, the WHO was also involved in covering up the Covid-19 pandemic initially.
Dissenting doctors were detained. Virus lab samples were destroyed. And China suppressed information on human-to-human transmission of the virus for as long as it was possible. Beijing virtually kept the world in the dark. But the cover-up failed because the virus had already spread in Wuhan, a major industrial city and commercial hub of the Hubei province connected to other parts of China and the world.
While China never let the world know about the actual coronavirus statistics in the country, the next cover-up was even more worrisome. The country completely denied there was any Wuhan accident releasing the coronavirus and in fact blamed the United States for the virus’s origin.
China did not share scientific samples on the coronavirus for further investigation, delayed sharing information to the WHO’s China chapter and first delayed and then allowed only a restricted WHO team visit to Wuhan. That, as per the global health body’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was not enough to properly investigate the coronavirus’s origin. Clearly, the WHO team needed more time and further studies that China did not allow.
As China was shutting itself down, the virus was spreading, and the first and the original epicentre, Wuhan, remained connected to the world, and soon exported the deadly pathogen to many other countries.
The report puts China in the dock. It says between 2012 and 2015, a genetically manipulated virus sequence was likely collected in a Yunnan cave. China, in fact, as per the report, made the People’s Liberation Army’s bioweapons expert the head of the WIV’s BSL-4 lab in early 2019. The BSL-4 lab is equipped with the highest level of biological safety.
The report adds that on September 12, 2019, the main public database of WIV suddenly went offline. During September and October, as per the report, an increased rush of patients with Covid-like symptoms was seen at Wuhan hospitals, as confirmed by satellite imagery. In October 2019, the Military World Games were held in Wuhan and many international athletes who returned home came with or developed Covid-19 symptoms.
The US has also been blamed through the roles of Peter Daszak and some scientists. The United States government funded his non-profit EcoHealth Alliance that in turn routed many US government grants to WIV. Daszak, in fact, worked with WIV on a bat coronavirus programme for years and was the key person behind a letter from a group of scientists in February 2020 to the Lancet that tried to absolve China by rejecting any alternative theory, saying the novel coronavirus indeed had a natural origin.
The committee’s report says, “We have uncovered evidence of how top scientists at the WIV and Dr Peter Daszak furthered that cover-up. Their actions include bullying other scientists who questioned whether the virus could have leaked from a lab; misleading the world about how a virus can be modified without leaving a trace; and, in many, instances directly lying about the nature of the research they were conducting, as well as the low-level safety protocols they were using for that research.” The report says Dr Peter Daszak should testify before the US Congress on his role.
It says the genetic modification of the coronavirus was funded both by the Chinese and US governments. Also, WIV was conducting gain-of-function research under poor lab safety conditions — at times under BSL-2 conditions — that the report describes as similar to a “dentist’s office”, and the lab leak was a certain possibility there.
Controversial gain-of-function research pushes mutations in microorganisms. Though the stated purpose behind it is to develop vaccines and therapeutics by finding new possible or emerging infections, in the case of coronavirus, there are allegations that the gain-of-function research enhanced the virus’s spike protein, the part the pathogen uses to attack human cells, to make it a deadly infectious agent. And once it was leaked out of the WIV, it soon covered the closely connected world by its increased transmissibility factor.
According to the committee’s report, an American scientist, Dr Ralph Baric, “assisted in creating a method to leave no trace of genetic modification as early as 2005 and as early as 2016, scientists working at the WIV were able to do the same”.
The report by Republicans confirms what former New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade and other scientists have been saying for long that the novel coronavirus was genetically engineered through gain-of-function research, i.e., modifying its genetic code. Wade says the coronavirus’s emergence in China makes for a strong lab-leak theory. The report is based on “open source information and includes published academic work, official PRC publications (both public and confidential), interviews, emails, and social media postings”, as Republicans claim.
The list of allegations against WIV and China is growing by the day. US Senator Tom Cotton has always said that the pandemic is related to the WIV research on coronavirus. Peter Jennings, the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), says that there may be an accidental release of the virus for military use.
Botao Xiao’s confession is a curious case. The Chinese scientist first said that the virus probably leaked from the Wuhan lab but under CCP pressure later withdrew his paper. Matt Pottinger’s allegation goes a step further, something that this report also confirms. According to him, Beijing directly intervened to destroy all viral samples. He is a former Clinton administration national security official and former deputy national security adviser.
18 scientists in May wrote a letter to the WHO, demanding a new investigation to confirm whether the coronavirus was leaked from the Wuhan lab or originated naturally. The same month, a report by the Wall Street Journal, quoting a US intelligence report, also mentioned three Wuhan lab researchers with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019.
After Joe Biden took over as US President, the White House asked China to share data of the coronavirus right from the beginning. China naturally refused, and, in fact, blamed the US for targeting it. But pushed by increasing allegations that the virus was leaked from the Wuhan lab, Biden, on May 26 announced a further investigation and asked the US Intelligence Committee to prepare a report in 90 days.
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