Washington, May 24

Three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology sought hospital care after they fell ill in November 2019, a month before Beijing reported the first patient with Covid-like symptoms, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The report provides fresh details on the number of researchers affected, the timing of their illnesses, and their hospital visits. The revelations come amid growing calls for a fuller probe on whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the Chinese laboratory. It also comes on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization's decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of investigation into the origin of Covid-19.

 A US State Department fact sheet released by the Trump administration in January said that the researchers had become sick in autumn 2019 and displayed "symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.". China reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) that the first patient with Covid-like symptoms was recorded in Wuhan on December 8, 2019.

 "The US government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illnesses," the report read.

 The Wall Street Journal reported that the current and former officials familiar with the intelligence about the lab researchers expressed differing views about the strength of the supporting evidence for the assessment.

One person said that it was provided by an international partner and was potentially significant but still in need of further investigation and additional corroboration. Another person described the intelligence as stronger. "The information that we had coming from the various sources was of exquisite quality. It was very precise. What it didn't tell you was exactly why they got sick," he said, referring to the researchers.

 Recently, Anthony Fauci, a top adviser to US President Joe Biden on the coronavirus pandemic said he's "not convinced" the deadly virus developed naturally and has called for further investigations into where it emerged. Fauci was asked during a Poynter event, "United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking," earlier this month about whether he was confident that Covid-19 developed naturally, Fox News reported.

"No actually. I am not convinced about that. I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened," Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, said. "Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out. So, you know, that's the reason why I said I'm perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus," he added. It is a reversal from his earlier position in which he dismissed theories that COVID-19 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

 Last Thursday, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released a report claiming there is "significant circumstantial evidence" that the coronavirus originated from a leak at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that the US government "may have funded or collaborated" in the research that led to it.

 "International efforts to discover the true source of the virus, however, have been stymied by a lack of cooperation from the People's Republic of China," the Republicans wrote in the report. Recently, findings in a report in an Australian daily has yet again reinforced the call that international investigators must dig deeper to rule out whether Covid-19 is a made-in-China bioweapon. Reuters