This colorized scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (round blue objects), the virus that causes COVID-19, emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. [Image courtesy of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases]
A previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report revealed that three scientists from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 to seek hospital care, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The illnesses were consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses, but the report fuels speculation that the scientists at the Wuhan lab were among the first to contract the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The disclosures have heightened calls for an independent probe into the origin of the pandemic because the Wuhan Institute of Virology has researched coronaviruses. The time frame of the workers’ hospital visits coincided with the beginning of human-to-human transmission of the virus in Wuhan. Researchers confirmed the first case of the virus on Dec. 8, 2019.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has not entirely dismissed the lab-leak hypothesis but has concluded that it is “extremely unlikely.” The WHO is, however, continuing to investigate the pandemic’s origins.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has not made raw data, safety logs and lab records available pertaining to its research on bat coronaviruses. Wang Yanyi, the lab director, has dismissed such theories as ‘pure fabrication’ in 2020. Yanyi said the lab received the first report of unknown pneumonia on Dec. 30, 2019, and that the lab had never encountered the virus before. “How could it have leaked from our lab when we never had it?” she asked.
China’s U.S. embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the topic.
A spokeswoman for the National Security Council recently told the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. government has “serious questions about the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic, including its origins within the People’s Republic of China,” but that the government was still unsure about the source of the pandemic.
Chinese officials have highlighted the possibility that the pandemic may have originated outside of Wuhan. They have called for an investigation into early COVID-19 outbreaks outside of its borders. Beijing has argued that the virus may have first emerged from the Fort Detrick army base in Maryland. Facilities there focus on biological defense.