Corona origin: does a new trail lead to a Chinese laboratory?
Created: 02/11/2022, 22:21
By: Magdalena Furthauer
Does the corona virus come from a laboratory?
The results of an independent research team are now focusing on a virology institute in Wuhan, China.
Wuhan/Washington – The corona virus has been keeping the world in suspense for almost three years.
The Chinese city of Wuhan, which imposed the first lockdowns at the beginning of January 2020, can now be identified relatively undisputedly as the starting point.
A fish market, where live animals were also traded, is particularly targeted.
Now, however, the results of the independent US research
organization ProPublica
are fueling speculation that the virus actually came from a laboratory.
Corona origin in Wuhan: does a new trail lead to a Chinese laboratory?
While corona lockdowns are being imposed again in China's metropolises, the research team around its head Toy Reid published the said report together with
Vanity Fair
on Friday.
The allegations against the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the Chinese government are serious.
Before 2020, the equipment at the institute was more than just inadequate, the technology standards were not up-to-date and the staff was not trained to deal with such highly pathogenic viruses as were examined at the WIV.
In addition, the early successes in vaccination research should be critically questioned.
In this virology institute in Wuhan, the conditions are said not to have been suitable for dealing with highly pathogenic viruses.
© Hector RETAMAL / AFP
Reid bases his research on documents and emails from the Chinese laboratory, some of which can be viewed freely on the Internet, as well as on discussions with various virologists.
The team would have worked on it for a total of five months.
Coronavirus: Report of problematic conditions in Wuhan laboratory
The fact that the WIV was already researching corona viruses before 2020 is nothing new.
Other institutes have also dealt with this type of virus in the past, only Sars-CoV-2 or Covid-19 and their mutations are new.
However, ProPublica
particularly emphasizes
the proximity to the agreed beginning of the pandemic .
One campus of the Virology Institute in Wuhan is only eight miles away from the fish market, the other a little further south.
The documents examined - all in Chinese - show the pressure under which the researchers of the WIV were around 2019.
Accordingly, the government demanded scientific breakthroughs, which is why the staff in the laboratory had to work four to six hours at a time.
This meant that the employees could not eat, drink or go to the toilet during this time.
Corona from the laboratory?
Research circumstances do not do justice to “dealing with dangerous viruses”
Between 2016 and 2018, several studies by the laboratories in Wuhan had shown that the research conditions there "did not do justice to the handling of dangerous viruses".
The handling of disinfectants was incorrect and water from the laboratory was fed directly into the general sewage system.
Even the researchers in Wuhan were aware of this problem and complained several times that they didn't have the equipment, standards, staff or experience to deal with such viruses.
In one document, someone from the institute even noted that the opening of test tubes with samples can be compared to "Pandora's box".
"These viruses come without a shadow and disappear without a trace," Reid quoted the site as saying.
At that time there was no talk of a global pandemic.
Coronavirus: Problems in Chinese laboratory - "safety training" 2019
Finally, on November 19, 2019, a senior government official and head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences visited the laboratory in Wuhan, which was researching corona viruses, among other things.
It is said to have been “a special safety training course”.
He found "several general problems" with regard to the security of the laboratory.
The
ProPublica team
even claims to have found evidence that party leader Xi was personally informed about the events.
In addition, there are many indications that the first person contracted the corona virus two days before the visit.
Corona: First vaccination developed by military institution - responsible scientist apparently dead
Finally, the report also addresses the fact that a Chinese medical military institution filed a patent for a corona vaccination in February 2020 before all other pharmaceutical companies.
Several experts assured the research team that this would only have been possible if the virus' genome had already been sequenced in November 2019.
However, it was only several weeks later that the Chinese government officially spoke of the outbreak of the corona virus.
According to ProPublica
, the scientist responsible for this, Zhou Yusen, is
now dead. A cause of death is not known.
However, it should be emphasized that all research results are conjectures based on some, but not all, official documents.
Many of these are not visible to non-governmental institutions outside of China.
(mef)
