Did the coronavirus come from a laboratory?
This thesis has been around since the pandemic began.
Now it is causing a stir again - and possibly a new dispute between the USA and China.
Update from May 27, 11.40 a.m.:
The People's Republic of China vehemently rejects the theory of a laboratory accident as the origin of the corona pandemic. Beijing is reacting to the new intelligence investigation ordered by Biden and criticizing it sharply. A spokesman for the Chinese State Department on Thursday denied the need for such an investigation - and accused the US secret services of a "dark story". The Communist Party accuses the US government of using conspiracy myths and politicizing the pandemic to divert attention from its own high death toll from Corona.
"Motives and goals" are "clear", the spokesman continued.
"The world has long known the dark history of US intelligence," he said, alluding to the US government's justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The US government at the time had presented alleged evidence of weapons of mass destruction that Iraq never did owned.
Corona origin in the laboratory?
Biden sends secret services to search for clues and has "specific questions for China"
First report from May 26th, 9:50 p.m .:
Washington - US President Joe Biden has ordered new intelligence investigations and a new report on the origin of the corona pandemic.
The intelligence services would have to step up their efforts to gather and analyze information about a possible laboratory accident in China and provide a report within 90 days, Biden said on Wednesday.
The background to this is the question of whether a laboratory accident in the Chinese city of Wuhan may have led to the global pandemic with more than 3.4 million deaths.
Coronavirus: origin of the pandemic - US secret services disagree
A report in the
Wall Street Journal
had recently given new impetus to suspicions about an accident at the Institute of Virology in Wuhan. The US newspaper reported on Sunday, citing a US intelligence report, that in November 2019 three employees of the institute were so seriously ill that they had gone to a hospital. The first corona infections became known in Wuhan at the end of 2019. On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization was informed by China about the accumulation of pneumonia (lung diseases).
Biden recently held back a little as to the origin of the virus and only let it be known that there were "still serious questions about the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic, including its origins in the People's Republic of China." that he had already requested a report from the secret services in March, asking whether the outbreak was due to an animal-to-human transmission of the virus or to a laboratory accident.
The report was presented to him in May.
There is currently disagreement among the US secret services as to which scenario is more likely.
Coronavirus: Pandemic jump - Biden announces "specific questions for China"
The consultant Anthony Fauci, known as the top virologist in the country, recently indicated that he was no longer completely convinced that Sars-Cov-2 had arisen naturally - although this scenario should still be regarded as "very likely".
With the ordered report, Biden now wants to finally get to the bottom of the origin.
Possible “specific questions for China” also play a role.
At the same time, the US President called on the government in Beijing to be more transparent: "The US will continue to work with like-minded partners to put pressure on China to participate in a complete, transparent, fact-based international investigation and to have access to all relevant data and To provide evidence. "
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Joe Biden and China's head of state Xi Jinping: The relationship between the two great powers is tense.
(Archive photo)
© Lintao Zhang / Pool / AFP
Coronavirus: Covid-19 originated in the laboratory?
China: "Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation"
Soon after the pandemic began, there was speculation that the virus could have escaped in an accident from the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, which is researching coronaviruses.
The Chinese government has vigorously denied this.
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry accused the US on Wednesday of "spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation".
After the US intelligence reports became public, the People's Republic already spoke of a "complete lie".
In a (controversial) study by the University of Hamburg in February 2021: “The present one-year study comes to the conclusion that both the number and the quality of the evidence clearly indicate a laboratory accident at the virological institute in the city of Wuhan as the cause of the current pandemic speak."
Coronavirus: unlikely, but possible - laboratory accident remains a conceivable origin
According to the WHO, direct zoonosis, i.e. transmission from animals to humans and introduction via an intermediate host, are the most likely origin variants, but there is no definitive evidence for any scenario.
The development as a result of a laboratory accident is therefore possible, although the WHO regards it as very unlikely, even after a detailed study.
However, the WHO report, in which international experts explained their results of the research from Wuhan, does not allow a final judgment. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for further testing of the hypothesis of a laboratory accident in Wuhan. Because China is confronted with the accusation of having obstructed the study. Numerous states expressed concern that the experts had been denied access to data during their investigation in China. At the WHO annual meeting in Geneva, which began on Monday, calls for further investigations were made.
(as / afp)
