- A lab leak most likely caused the COVID-19 pandemic
- The virus' spread could also be a result of a research-related incident
- China is said to have collected OCVID-19-like virus to produce a vaccine
New research revealed that China began producing COVID-19 vaccines before the outbreak commenced.
According to a 300-page dossier collected by the US Senate, Chinese researchers began work on a vaccination program in mid-November of 2019. It adds to evidence that the authorities tried to conceal early cases before informing the World Health Organization (WHO) on December 31.
The investigation also says that a lab leak most likely caused the pandemic and resulted from a research-related incident in Wuhan. It even implies that two inadvertent spill-over episodes occurred just weeks apart. The paper, obtained by the US news website Axios, is the complete version of a 35-page summary published in October by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
One component of the paper focuses on China's vaccine development. According to the committee's findings, a team led by Professor Yusen Zhou of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences submitted a patent for a COVID-19 vaccine on February 24, 2020.
Experts consulted by the investigators stated that it would have taken at least two to three months to reach this point, implying that development must have begun in November 2019, one month before China officially revealed data on the virus.
The analysis of early circulating Wuhan COVID-19 variants also supports the potential of two spill-over occurrences occurring just weeks apart, as per Daily Mail.
According to the evaluation, minor genetic changes in early circulating strains show that two lineages of the same virus arose simultaneously and evolved in opposite directions. It goes on to say that epidemiological modeling and reports of early COVID-19 infections suggest that the virus will most likely enter people between mid-October and mid-November 2019.
However, it did not provide a definitive judgment on the cause of the pandemic. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) previously acknowledged keeping RaTG13, a bat coronavirus, 96% identical to COVID-19 and up to 99.9% similar in some parts of the genome.
WIV experts had been collecting and analyzing bat viruses to determine which were most likely to infect people and avert a large epidemic. However, Prof Palacios of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai's Division of Infectious Disease, Global Health, and Emerging Pathogens Institute stated that the effort was ineffective in managing the epidemic.
This week, a report by the United States Senate described how Wuhan scientists took bat samples without sufficient protection.vA panel of virology specialists at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' Pathogen Project meeting also emphasized that scientists should not work on viruses not currently spreading in nature.
Per Telegraph via MSN, Prof Palacios also cautioned that scientists had lost trust because they had yet to respond to the public's concerns concerning the COVID-19 origins.
China's COVID-19 Whistleblower
Meanwhile, citizen journalist Fang Bin, who went missing for three years after recording from hospitals and funeral homes in Wuhan during the COVID-19 pandemic, was sentenced in secret to three years in prison, Radio Free Asia has learned.
Fang was incommunicado following a live stream from Wuhan healthcare facilities on February 1, 2020, and produced a handful more videos describing his interrogation by authorities in the days that followed, before becoming silent for three years, with no word on his fate.
He was one of several high-profile bloggers who attempted to report on Wuhan's developing and poorly understood viral pandemic. His report also referred to the outbreak as a "man-made" calamity, urging people to stand up to the government's "tyranny."
According to an individual acquainted with the case who declined to be identified for personal safety, Fang's family was alerted by authorities that he would be freed from jail on April 30. Fang reportedly spent his term at the Xiaojunshan old juvenile detention center in Wuhan's Jiangxia district. The presiding judge who convicted Fang surnamed Lian, refused to speak when asked about the case.
Wang Xiaohua, a Wuhan citizen, said Fang reported on "the disaster of the century" via live-streamed video broadcasts to the rest of the globe during the Wuhan lockdown.
Fang was reporting from the Wuhan No. 5 Hospital and funeral home in Wuchang, part of the three-city conurbation that is Wuhan, at the time, and saw personnel transport eight dead bodies in the space of five minutes, according to his video report.
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