The Wuhan laboratory in Hubei province is now at the center of speculation about the origins of COVID-19.
Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, claimed in May there is 'enormous evidence' the coronavirus outbreak originated in a Chinese laboratory – but failed to provide any of the alleged evidence. In April, Trump said: 'We are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened.' The Institute has denied the claims from the early days of the outbreak. President Donald Trump claims he has seen evidence the virus, which he solely blames China for, came from Wuhan Institute of Virology – but he is not allowed to reveal it. Two high security laboratories in the city – the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and the Wuhan Institute of Virology – have been the subject of many conspiracy theories. There are also theories that the virus was genetically engineered by scientists, or that it has actually been around for years and even killed people in the past. Once it entered humans, the coronavirus is likely to have mutated to survive and then escalated out of control as a result of an unprepared population. It is thought the virus first developed in bats before passing on to a creature such as a pangolin that then came into contact with humans and transmitted the virus. US state officials have given momentum to the idea that COVID-19 either leaked from a lab or was man-made by China as some kind of weapon against humanity.Ī Wuhan wet market was first thought to be the breeding ground of the virus, where the selling of live, wild animals would have given the perfect opportunity for it to naturally spread between species. On January 15 the State Department published a fact sheet about COVID-19, which said that 'circumstantial' evidence suggested a lab leak theory was possible.īiden on May 26 ordered intelligence agencies to investigate the two competing ideas about the origins of the pandemic - evolved naturally and passed from animals to humans, or released from a laboratory. Now scientists believe that it may indeed be true. Last year scientists were downplaying the theory, insisting that it was far more likely that the COVID-19 virus passed from animals to humans. 'He previously headed the Guoanbu (security ministry) in the region of Hebei, which has produced many of Xi's securocrats,' the publication reported in 2018.ĭong's defection, if it happened, may never be confirmed.īut it does come as the Biden administration, following scientific consensus, makes a notable shift in its thinking about the 'lab leak' theory. Spy Talk also quoted the Paris-based newsletter Intelligence Online as reporting that Dong is 'close to' Xi Jinping, the Chinese president. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) personnel detailed to DIA have corroborated very technical details of information provided by the defector,' it said. 'Sources say the level of confidence in the defector's information is what has led to a sudden crisis of confidence in Dr. Red State reported that Dong's defection pushed U.S. He is said to have demanded the return of Dong, who reportedly defected on February 10 funds in the Wuhan lab, insisting that their research into coronaviruses was essential and it would be 'a dereliction of duty' not to support their work.Ĭhinese Communist Party foreign affairs chief Yang Jiech is pictured at the March 18 meeting in Alaska. Defense Intelligence Agency had received information from him that Beijing is covering up biological warfare research at the Wuhan lab.ĭr Anthony Fauci, Biden's chief medical advisor and a current target of Republican fury, has defended investing U.S. The conservative website Red State reported that the U.S. 'In short, if true, this is potentially significant but not a game-changer.' 'While significant and certainly useful for our intelligence efforts, one high-level defection will not drastically change our understanding or approach to China,' she told Spy Talk. Mollie Saltskog, a senior intelligence analyst with The Soufan Group, agreed, saying that unconfirmed reports of defections surface regularly. He added that such rumors 'happen all the time'. But Eftimiades, a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, warned that the report should be seen for 'exactly what it is, a rumor.'
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