According to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report, obtained and reported on by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, three researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care.
This incident occurred weeks before the first Covid-19 case was confirmed in China on December 8, and could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory.
MSN News is reporting that the information on the researchers and the timing of their illnesses, along with their hospital visits come on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into Covid-19’s origins.
But, according to Forbes, a State Department fact sheet issued January 15, during the Trump administration, which drew on classified intelligence, said that the “U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and seasonal illnesses.”
Of course, “unnamed officials” familiar with the intelligence reporting gave the Wall Street Journal differing views as to the veracity of the report, with one person saying it needed further investigation while another described it as “very precise.”
China’s Foreign Ministry, in a statement to the WSJ said that “The U.S. continues to hype the lab leak theory.” In the statement, the ministry also pointed to the March findings from the World Health Organization saying it was “extremely unlikely” that Covid-19 originated from a lab leak and that it was instead more likely the virus spread from bats to humans.
And while that may have been true, after the findings were released, WHO head Tedros Ghebreyesus called for a deeper investigation on the matter, saying the possibility of a laboratory leak of the virus wasn’t adequately addressed.
The Biden administration declined to comment on the intelligence but said that all technically credible theories on the origin of the pandemic should be investigated by the WHO and international experts.
