Was the Covid-19 virus artificial - Wuhan lab staff raise suspicion

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  Was the Covid-19 virus artificial - Wuhan lab staff raise suspicion

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Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

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• The story: America's famous publication the Wall Street Journal said three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) sought hospital care in November 2019, months before China disclosed the COVID-19 pandemic. This was also mentioned in US intelligence reports. 
• Significance: The newspaper said the report — which provides fresh details on the number of researchers affected, the timing of their illnesses, and their hospital visits — may add weight to calls for a broader probe of whether the COVID-19 virus could have escaped from the laboratory.

1. A special meeting of the World Health Organisations decision-making body is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
2. The Biden administration continued to have “serious questions about the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, including its origins within the Peoples Republic of China.”
3. The U.S. government was working with the WHO and other member states to support an expert-driven evaluation of the pandemic’s origins “that is free from interference or politicisation.”

• More: The WSJ said current and former officials familiar with the intelligence about the lab researchers expressed a range of views about the strength of the report’s supporting evidence,with one unnamed person saying it needed “further investigation and additional corroboration.” The United States, Norway, Canada, Britain and other countries in March expressed concerns about the WHO-led COVID-19 origins study, and called for further investigation and full access to all pertinent human, animal and other data about the early stages of the outbreak. The US is keen to ensure greater cooperation and transparency by China, according to a source familiar with the effort.
• What China says: China’s foreign ministry noted that a WHO-led team had concluded a lab leak was extremely unlikely after a visit in February 2021 to the virology institute. China said that the U.S. continues to hype the lab leak theory, just to divert attention. The Trump administration had said it suspected the virus may have escaped from a Chinese lab, which Beijing denies.
• Summary: Trump administration believed that the 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. China refused to give raw data on early COVID-19 cases to the WHO-led team probing the origins of the pandemic, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began.

Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

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