Wuhan institute involved in creation, cover-up of Covid pandemic: Report

Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic more than three years ago, there has been a debate about whether the virus emerged due to a laboratory leak or was it from nature. And researchers who have over these years attempted to find the answer have been hampered by a lack of transparency from China, the country from where the virus first emerged. 

However, a report in The Sunday Times on Saturday (June 10) said that Chinese scientists were running a covert project of dangerous experiments that caused a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and started the Covid outbreak. Citing US investigators, the report said there was no published information on the work as it was done in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese military, which was funding it, and was pursuing bioweapons. 

'Institute engaged in risky experiments on coronaviruses'

The Sunday Times report said that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had started hunting the origins of the Sars virus in 2003. It attracted funding from the US government through a New York-based charity. The institute was engaged in risky experiments on coronaviruses it gathered from bat caves in southern China. Initially, the findings (of the experiments) were made public and the institute argued that the associated risks were justified as the work might help develop vaccines. 

Also read | FBI coronavirus 'lab leak' claims hurt US credibility: China

Fast forward to 2016, researchers found a new type of coronavirus in a mineshaft in Mojiang in Yunnan province where people had died from symptoms similar to Sars.

And instead of warning the world, China did not report these deaths. The report said that the virus found there are now recognised as the only members of Covid’s immediate family known to have been in existence pre-pandemic. They were transported to the Wuhan Institute and the work of its scientists became classified.

American investigators said the classified programme was to make the mineshaft viruses more infectious to humans, the report added. The investigators believed this led to the creation of Covid and that it leaked into Wuhan after a laboratory accident. 

“It has become increasingly clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in the creation, promulgation, and cover-up of the Covid-19 pandemic,” one of the investigators said. 

In November 2019, researchers working on these experiments were hospitalised with Covid-like symptoms, and their relatives died. 

China blocks foreign experts from probing source of pandemic

The Sunday Times report also pointed out that foreign experts seeking to identify the source of the pandemic were blocked from investigating by China. Alice Hughes, a British bat expert, was a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences which oversees the Wuhan Institute. Hughes had been working in the mines. She said she was barred from speaking to the media about her research and was being watched by Beijing. The restrictions forced her to leave China and move to Hong Kong.

US investigators get access to secret intelligence

As countries around the world emerged from lockdowns, US investigators were given access to secret intelligence on what was going on in China before Covid emerged. The report said that over a dozen investigators were given access to “metadata, phone information and internet information” from intercepts collected by the US intelligence services.

The report also said that the shadow project on the mine viruses at the Wuhan Institute was being funded by the Chinese military. In a separate report, US State Department investigators said, "Despite presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017."

The Chinese military was also given positions of responsibility in the institute. One of the investigators said the reason the Mojiang case was covered up was due to military secrecy related to [the army’s] pursuit of dual-use capabilities in virological biological weapons and vaccines. 

The military had taken an interest in developing a vaccine for the viruses so they could be used as potential bioweapons, the report also said. 

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