The controversy over the origin of COVID-19 is hot again

The Wall Street Journal has just cited never-before-seen intelligence that, in November 2019, three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (China) fell ill with COVID-19-like symptoms and died. hospitalized, before the COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed.

Front of Wuhan Institute of Virology Photo: Reuters This information adds weight to calls for a more complete investigation into the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic virus escaped from this laboratory. The above content is mentioned in a report from the Donald Trump administration, which said that some researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a center dedicated to research on corona viruses and other pathogens, had fell ill in the fall of 2019 “with symptoms resembling COVID-19 and common seasonal flu.” U.S. officials and former officials with intelligence on researchers in Wuhan expressed differing views on the strength of the evidence outlined in the report. One said that information was provided by an international partner and could be important, but needed further investigation. Others claim that the information is very reliable. “The information that we have comes from a variety of sources and is of very good quality. It is very accurate. What the report doesn’t talk about is the exact reason why they got the disease,” the source told Journal City Wall . Many epidemiologists and virologists believe that November 2019 was the time when SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the COVID-19 pandemic, began to spread in Wuhan. Beijing says that the first confirmed case in the city fell ill on December 8. China has repeatedly denied that the virus escaped from laboratories. On May 23, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs cited a report published by an investigation team led by the World Health Organization (WHO) after a visit to the Wuhan Institute of Viruses (WIV), saying that the virus leaked from the laboratory. experience is extremely unlikely. “The US continues to hype the theory of lab leaks. Are they really interested in traceability or are they trying to distract? China’s Foreign Ministry said. However, WIV does not share with the WHO team raw data, diaries and lab records where a lot of coronaviruses from bats are studied, the animals that many scientists consider most likely to be the animals. origin of the virus. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the team had not yet fully tested the lab leak hypothesis, so further investigation was still needed. There is an opinion that the article of Journal City Wall appearing before the upcoming WHO meeting was to heat the matter up again. But the Biden administration declined to comment on the intelligence report, saying only that all credible theories about the origins of the pandemic should be investigated by WHO and international experts. Abnormal point Shi Zhengli, the leading expert on bat coronaviruses at the WIV, said that the virus did not come out of the place where she was working. She told the WHO investigation team that all staff here were negative for COVID-19 antibodies and there were no staff changes in the corona virus research team. In February, Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans, a member of the investigation team who traveled to Wuhan, told NBC News that some WIV staff members fell ill in the fall of 2019, but she attributed it to common seasonal illnesses. “It’s normal to get sick from time to time. Nothing outstanding. Maybe 1 or 2 people. It’s not a big deal,” Koopmans said. Beijing even suggested that the virus could have originated outside of China, including a laboratory at the Fort Detrick military facility in the US state of Maryland, and then called on WHO to investigate the first COVID-19 outbreaks. in other countries. But most scientists see no evidence to support the idea the virus originated in a US military lab, and the White House says there is no credible reason to investigate the facility. . It is normal for Chinese people to go to the hospital for medical examination and treatment when they are sick, because family doctor services are not yet common. COVID-19 and seasonal flu, although two different illnesses, share many of the same symptoms, such as fever, cough, and aches and pains. However, it is worth noting that members of the same corona virus research team were sick and had to be hospitalized with similar symptoms, before the disease was detected. David Asher, a former US official who led the State Department task force to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told a Hudson Institute panel in March that he suspects suspected that the WIV researchers were sick at the same time from the common seasonal flu. “I highly doubt that three people with good protective clothing working in a third-degree lab caught the flu and were hospitalized with severe symptoms in the same week that had nothing to do with the coronavirus,” he said. Asher said, these three people could be the “first known COVID-19 outbreak”.