China urged to tell truth after claims coronavirus originated in Wuhan lab during risky tests on bats
CHINA was urged to come clean last night over claims coronavirus originated in a lab.
Bungling scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology accidentally spread the killer during risky coronavirus tests on bats, US and British intelligence officials fear.
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Patient Zero, the first person to contract Covid-19, was an intern there who infected her boyfriend, it was being claimed.
President Donald Trump said the US was trying to establish if coronavirus first crossed to humans during the bat tests.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pointed out that the WIV was “just a handful of miles” from the live animal market which Chinese officials rushed to pinpoint as the source of the outbreak.
Calling for more transparency from China, he added: “There is still lots to learn. The United States government is working diligently to figure it out.”
The World Health Organisation also pointed the finger at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan. It said many of the first patients were stall owners, employees or regular visitors.
It said tests on samples indicated it was the source of the outbreak or had “played a role in the initial amplification”.
But it was unclear if the market, which sells several species of exotic animals to eat, actually sold bats which are thought to be the likeliest source of Covid-19, although pangolins carry viruses closedly related to it.
US intelligence officials, who dismissed early reports that coronavirus was created in a laboratory as a bioweapon, are now investigating whether it escaped accidentally during tests.
One intelligence source said British and US officials were considering the possibility “very closely at the highest levels”.
It comes just days after it emerged two worried US embassy officials had warned in 2018 of a possible outbreak of a deadly new coronavirus strain following a visit to Wuhan Institute of Virology.
They feared scientists in the lab, China’s first to be awarded the highest level of international bioresearch safety, were taking too few precautions during risky studies on coronaviruses from bats.
The pair met chief researcher Shi Zhengli the author of several studies into bat coronaviruses.
One showed that horseshoe bats from a cave in Yunnan, about 1,500 miles from Wuhan, were probably from the population that spawned the 2003 Sars virus.
The scientists have reportedly traced the sequencing of the Covid-19 genome to Yunnan.
The diplomats sent two “Sensitive But Unclassified” cables back to the US, one to say the lab “has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators” needed to run it safely.
They urged the US to give the WIV further funding, mainly as its research on bat coronaviruses was important but also dangerous.
It was trying to establish how to prevent another Sars-like pandemic by anticipating how it might emerge.
Staff were said to have rejected US assistance to show they could work independently.
But the US fears they may have accidentally let the virus escape. Intelligence sources told Fox News that Patient Zero infected her boyfriend who visited the wet market.
The sources claimed lab staff destroyed virus samples, erased reports and suppressed academic papers on coronavirus.
China denied claims the virus originated in the WIV. But an insider called its insistence the outbreak began in the market the “costliest government cover-up of all time”.
Quizzed about the new allegations, President Trump replied: “More and more, we’re hearing the story. We’re doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation.”
Asked if he had raised the subject with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he said: “I don’t want to discuss what I talked to him about the laboratory.”
Secretary of State Pompeo has urged China to “let the world in” and allow scientists to figure out “exactly how this virus began to spread”.
He added: “There were a lot of cases, a lot of movement, a lot of travel around the world before the Chinese Communist Party came clean about what really transpired there.
“These are the kinds of things that open governments (and) democracies don’t do. It’s why there’s such risk associated with the absence of transparency. We need it.”
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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian repeated that there was “no scientific basis” for the laboratory claims and denied his country suppressed evidence.
But it emerged on Wednesday that top Chinese officials waited six days to warn the public after becoming aware that a viral outbreak was causing a rash of deadly pneumonia cases in Wuhan.
Meanwhile, the city held a banquet for tens of thousands as millions travelled for the Lunar New Year celebrations.
The failure to meant coronavirus spread and more than 140,000 have died so far.
China’s death toll figures — 3,342 last night — have long been doubted by the US government. The Chinese government also arrested or silenced doctors who tried to speak out about the new disease.
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Dali Yang, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Chicago, said: “Doctors in Wuhan were afraid. “It was truly intimidation of an entire profession.”
Xiao Qiang, a research scientist from the University of California, Berkeley, added: “To understand exactly how this originated is critical knowledge for preventing this from happening in the future.
“It’s a legitimate question that needs to be investigated.”
Brit firms 'a bargain'
by Tracey Boles
OPPORTUNISTIC Chinese firms hunting a bargain are set to buy British and European companies weakened by the pandemic, the EU says.
Competition chief Margrethe Vestager said firms that have seen share prices fall since the outbreak are vulnerable to takeover.
Regulators are working on proposals, due in June, to grant EU countries powers to derail unfair competition from state-backed enterprises.
European companies, including British ones, have long been in the sights of Chinese rivals.
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