The United States state department on January 15 released a “fact sheet” on activities at the Institute of Virology in China's Wuhan, saying researchers fell sick before the outbreak and the Chinese authorities systematically blocked the investigation into the origin to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The capital of central China's Hubei province, Wuhan is where the novel coronavirus outbreak was first reported in late 2019.
In the statement, the outgoing Donald Trump administration claimed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had “systematically prevented a transparent and thorough” investigation of the origins of COVID-19, the infectious disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
The state department said that the Chinese government instead “devoted enormous resources to deceit and disinformation”. “The CCP’s deadly obsession with secrecy and control comes at the expense of public health in China and around the world,” the statement read.
Calling for greater scrutiny, the three-part "fact sheet" combines “previously undisclosed information” with “open-source reporting” – illnesses inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), secret military activity at the institute and the research there.
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The government said it had a “reason to believe” that several researchers at the institute in Wuhan became sick in the autumn of 2019–before the first identified case of the outbreak–and that the symptoms were consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.
Further, the state department alleged that starting in at least 2016, researchers at WIV had conducted experiments involving RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2.
“Secrecy and non-disclosure are standard practice for Beijing. For many years, the United States has publicly raised concerns about China’s past biological weapons work, which Beijing has neither documented nor demonstrably eliminated, despite its clear obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention,” the statement added, accusing China of conducting secret military activities at the institute.
The statement comes at a time when a World Health Organization (WHO) team is Wuhan to investigate the origins of the pandemic.
The WHO team’s visit has become a bone of contention as Beijing, which questions the widely-held view about the novel coronavirus' origins in Wuhan, had delayed granting permission to it.
China has been questioning the view that the outbreak took place in a wet market in Wuhan, where live animals, birds and reptiles are sold, and spread to humans.
“Any credible investigation into the origin of COVID-19 demands complete, transparent access to the research labs in Wuhan, including their facilities, samples, personnel, and records,” the state department said.
Globally, more than 9.47 crore people have been infected by the virus and over 20.29 lakh people have died so far.
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