Report says three Wuhan lab researchers were hospitalized in November 2019

Samuel Chamberlain
New York Post
Sun, 23 May 2021 19:08 UTC

The Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China.

Three researchers at a Chinese lab that has been scrutinized as the possible origin point of the coronavirus pandemic went to the hospital due to an illness in November 2019, according to a new report.

The Wall Street Journal, which cited current and former US officials, reported that the intelligence gathered by "an international partner" expands on a State Department document confirming that workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill with symptoms "consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness" in fall 2019.

The officials were split on the strength of the intelligence, with one telling the Journal it needed more corroboration and another saying it was "of exquisite quality" and "very precise." Both said the intelligence stopped short of confirming the researchers had contracted coronavirus.

Many health experts believe the coronavirus began circulating in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in November 2019. Authorities in Beijing date the first confirmed case to Dec. 8 of that year.

The theory that the coronavirus accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology into the wider population has gained credence as a viable explanation in recent weeks, following a World Health Organization-led investigation and report — compiled with the help of the Chinese government — that left many other nations dissatisfied.

© Wuhan Virology Institute

Staff are pictured above at the Wuhan Institute of Technology.

China has contributed to the suspicion, with the lab not releasing records related to its work on coronaviruses in bats. Meanwhile, Beijing has pushed a series of wild theories, including that the coronavirus spread through imported frozen food packaging and originated at a biomedical research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland.

Comment: Not so wild, actually.

• Did COVID-19 escape Fort Detrick vaccine trial? Evidence that virus originated in US bioweapons lab
• Did European athletes catch coronavirus while competing at World Military Games in Wuhan in OCTOBER?
• Chinese official speculates Americans may have infected Wuhan at army games, calls for them to be "transparent"
• US Intelligence report warned of coronavirus outbreak as early as November
• Sweden coronavirus chief: Country likely had Covid-19 cases in NOVEMBER

Earlier this month, a group of top scientists from around the globe pushed back on the WHO's conclusion that a lab leak is "extremely unlikely" — arguing in the journal Science that theory is "viable" and deserves "a proper investigation."

Meanwhile, Republicans are pressing federal health officials to detail what the Wuhan Institute of Virology did with grant money from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

On Friday, six GOP senators and one congressman signed a letter to NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins requesting details about a 2014 moratorium on funding so-called "gain of function research" — in which viruses are manipulated in a lab environment to become more transmissible and harmful. The letter also requested more information about the lifting of the moratorium in late 2017 and whether programs and researchers linked to the Wuhan lab were granted exceptions.

White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has repeatedly denied that the NIH funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, but Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) accused Fauci of playing "word games" Sunday.

"The money that the NIH gave went to an American organization which turned around and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to these Wuhan labs to investigate coronaviruses and yes, to find ways to make them more contagious and more dangerous," Cotton told Fox Business Network's Sunday Morning Futures.

Comment: Sen. Tom Cotton rips Fauci, Wuhan gain of function research funding

"I think that there could be an example here of these public health bureaucrats thinking they know better, that they're not going to answer to political oversight and accountability ... and they went ahead with this research that could be very dangerous," Cotton added. "That's why it is imperative that the NIH come clean and tell us exactly what happened."

Comment: The presumed Patient Zero of the coronavirus outbreak appears to be still missing. From the New Zealand Herald

The fate of a Chinese researcher believed to be the world's first Covid-19 patient remains a mystery despite a year-long search by Western intelligence officials investigating the origins of the pandemic.

Huang Yanling, who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was one of scores of doctors, scientists, activists and journalists who disappeared during the Chinese Communist Party's suspected cover-up.

During the early weeks of the outbreak last February, rumours swirled on Chinese social media that the graduate student was "patient zero", creating a direct link between the controversial lab and the virus outbreak. Chinese officials quickly stepped in to censor the reports from the internet.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology denied she was patient zero and insisted, without evidence, that she was alive and well elsewhere in the country - while scrubbing her biography and image from its website.

A post purporting to be from Huang later appeared on social media platform WeChat.

"To my teachers and fellow students, how long no speak," the message said. "I am Huang Yanling, still alive. If you receive any email (regarding the Covid-19 rumour), please say it's not true."

Her former boss made a separate post on social media claiming that she had left the institute in 2015, while a Chinese news agency claimed that it had spoken with her new employer but provided no other details.

© news.com.au

Missing Chinese Wuhan researcher Huang Yanling.

A grainy photo of the young woman in her 20s with long hair seen peering out from behind a colleague - salvaged from the website and circulated online - is the only known photo of Huang.

According to the UK's Mail on Sunday, which has also attempted unsuccessfully to track her down, little else is known about her other than that her name is included among the authors of three scientific papers issued by the institute between 2013 and 2015.

The Mail on Sunday says Western governments and intelligence agencies have tried and failed to track down Huang, sparking fears she is either dead or being detained by Chinese authorities.

Huang's disappearance had earlier been cited in a 15-page dossier prepared by Western governments - published by The Sunday Telegraph in May last year - laying out evidence the virus had escaped from the lab. The Mail on Sunday says its own extensive inquiries within China, including messages to her former colleagues, have also turned up empty.

Despite China's internet censors stamping out discussion of Huang, many social media users continue to speculate about her fate, with some claiming she may have been hastily cremated.

"Everyone on the Chinese internet is searching for Huang," one blogger wrote, according to the Mail on Sunday. "Most believe she is dead."

© news.co.au

Wuhan Institute of Virology senior researcher Shi Zhengli.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the Mail on Sunday in a statement that the Chinese Communist Party had prevented investigators from interviewing researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology "including those who were ill in the fall (autumn) of 2019".

"Beijing continues today to withhold vital information that scientists need to protect the world from this deadly virus and the next one," Pompeo said.

It comes as US officials step up their attacks on China over the pandemic, claiming they have explosive new evidence that proves Covid-19 leaked from the lab.

Pompeo earlier demanded the World Health Organisation launch an investigation into the possibility the virus was result of an "accidental" lab leak. He said US intelligence agencies had found scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in the autumn of 2019 with symptoms consistent with Covid-19, earlier than previously believed.

"This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli's public claim that there was 'zero infection' among WIV's staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses," Pompeo said.

The first cluster of cases was discovered in December 2019 in Wuhan, with early reports linking the outbreak to a controversial "wet market" that sold and butchered exotic animals in disgusting conditions.

The "patient zero" of the Huanan market had previously been named as a 57-year-old seafood merchant, a woman named Wei Guixian, who first started to feel sick on December 10.

On Thursday, the WHO's team of experts arrived in Wuhan to begin their investigation into the origins of the virus, which has now killed more than two million people globally.

"We need to be very careful about the use of the phrase 'patient zero' which many people indicate as the first initial case," Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's Covid-19 technical lead, told a press conference.

"We may never find who the patient zero was."

Western governments believe that the body has largely ceded control of the investigation to China, leading to fears of a whitewash.

"Unfortunately, this has become a political investigation," Singapore-based Australian virologist Wang Linfa told The New York Times in November. "Whatever they do is symbolic."