As Australia struggles with more COVID lock downs and retailers are forced to shut up shop, new evidence is emerging from China on how the pandemic broke out with Chinese Government officials scrambling to cover up its source according to a US investigation, they also tried to hide measures taken to prevent the spread of the pandemic as far back as September 2019.
Days out from US President Biden’s deadline for the intelligence community’s review into the origins of the pandemic, Republican politicians in the USA have moved to release their most detailed case yet arguing that researchers in Wuhan genetically manipulated the virus and that “the preponderance of evidence suggests SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory.”
What’s also been revealed is that the Wuhan National Biosafety Lab requested bids for major renovations to air safety and waste treatment systems in research facilities that had been operational for less than 2 years, according to a new congressional report on the pandemic’s origins, obtained by Fox News.
“Such a significant renovation so soon after the facility began operation appears unusual,” said the report from the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Republican staff.
The projects for air disinfection, hazardous waste and central air conditioning systems “all raise questions about how well these systems were functioning in the months prior to the outbreak of COVID-19.”
There are now suggestions that the new evidence adds circumstantial element to the controversial argument that the pandemic began in a Wuhan lab, including suspicious behaviour and obfuscation from China’s government and signs the pandemic began months before previously assumed.
The Chinese Government has objected to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison calling for an investigation into the leaks, this led to the Chinese Communist Government putting into place bans deliberately designed to harm Australian trade into China.
Fox News claims that without cooperation from China’s government, there is significant scepticism any of the handful of U.S. government investigations will provide a concrete narrative into how the pandemic originated.
Using project announcements published on the Chinese government’s procurement website, along with other open-sourced data the Republicans on the Foreign Affairs Committee have built their argument on a timeline that claims the virus escaped the Wuhan Institute of Virology “sometime prior to September 12, 2019.”
On that day, the Wuhan University, less than a mile from the WIV’s headquarters, issued a notice for laboratory inspections.
Hours later, the WIV’s viral sequence database disappeared from the internet.
Later that evening, the institute published an announcement for bids for “security services” at the lab “to include gatekeepers, guards, video surveillance, security patrols, and people to handle the ‘registration and reception of foreign personnel,’” according to the report.
Citing testimony from “a former senior U.S. official,” the report claims Major General Chen Wei, an expert in biology and chemical weapon defences, took control of the Wuhan Institute’s biosafety level-4 lab in late 2019.
That timing demonstrates the Chinese Communist Party “was concerned about the activity happening there as news of the virus was spreading,” according to the report. “If she took control in 2019, it would mean the CCP knew about the virus earlier, and that the outbreak began earlier.”
Satellite imagery of Wuhan in September and October 2019 showed a significant increase in hospital visits and internet searches for COVID-19 symptoms.
The report also claims that mapping data suggesting researchers at the lab likely used the Wuhan shuttle bus and city metro for their daily work commute, spreading the virus throughout the city.
The committee also used an interview in Bloomberg with Dr. Danielle Anderson, an Australian virologist, to establish some of the lab’s commuting patterns.
Anderson is the only foreign scientist to have undertaken research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s BSL-4 lab, according to Bloomberg.
In October, Wuhan hosted the 2019 Military World Games, which drew thousands of military personnel to compete in Olympic-style events.
International press reports cite athletes claiming events were conducted without fans and that Wuhan was a “ghost town.”
Athletes from several countries complained of COVID-like symptoms and four countries that sent athletes have confirmed the presence of COVID-19 in November and December of 2019, before the outbreak became public, according to the report.
