People's Republic of Coronavirus

Why a Chinese virology lab is unable to quell the Chinese coronavirus theories around it

By Jane Li

A Chinese state-owned virology lab in Wuhan, the epicenter of China’s coronavirus epidemic, is finding it extremely hard to quell theories proliferating around the institution—a sign of the sharply decreased level of public trust in the government since the outbreak of the Chinese virus.

At the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a subsidiary of the state-owned research institute the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), scientists carry out virus research at a lab with the highest level of biological containment available on the mainland. 

Its construction was approved in 2003, during China’s last deadly coronavirus outbreak, SARS, and completed five years ago, according to Nature journal. 

The lab came under spotlight in late January, after Chinese scientists said the Chinese virus could have a connection to bats via an intermediary, such as some form of game sold at a seafood market in Wuhan. 

As the lab has researchers who study bat-related viruses, it became a target of online suspicion that coalesced into theories that the Chinese virus could have escaped from the lab, or be a bio-weapon gone wrong.
An unvetted research paper published on Jan. 31 by a group of Indian scientists, in which they claimed similarities between the Chinese virus and the HIV virus, appearing to hint at human engineering, also stirred further controversy surrounding the institute. 

Some journals have appended notes to older stories about the Wuhan lab calling the theories about the lab “unverified.”

However, the rumors have kept spreading widely online, to the extent that Shi Zhengli, a lead researcher on bat-related viruses in the lab, posted on her WeChat account on Feb. 2 that the virus was “a punishment from the nature for humans’ uncivilized life habits,” and said she “guaranteed with her life” it was totally unrelated to the lab. 

But just as Shi’s assurance seemed to have calmed some down, a notice from the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology last Saturday (Feb. 15) started a fresh wave of suspicion towards the lab.
The ministry said in the notice that China should enhance its management of viruses and bioagents at all labs and research institutes, without any explanation as to why this is being proposed right now, leaving some to speculate whether this could be a subtle official acknowledgement of a role played by the lab. 

The following day, US senator Tom Cotton appeared on Fox News to say that the Chinese virus was not far from the wildlife market where many people were infected in December.
There are a number of reasons why these theories keep finding many takers—not just among China hawks but among so many in China. 

One is, there’s still so much that isn’t known about the Chinese virus and its origins.“At this stage, no expert can be absolutely certain about the cause of the outbreak. This uncertainty makes it easier for some people to think all explanations have equal merit,” explained assistant professor Masato Kajimoto, who researches information ecosystems in Asia at the University of Hong Kong’s journalism school.

After Shi’s statement, the lab too has stepped out more than once to try quell the theories. 

The institute first rejected speculation that the first patient to be infected with the Chinese virus was a graduate student who studied at the lab, saying on Sunday (Feb. 16) the student is in "good health". 

Yesterday (Feb. 19), it issued a worded statement (link in Chinese), saying the rumors about it have “hurt the feelings of its frontline researchers hugely” and “severely interfered” with its task to study viruses. 

“We have nothing to hide,” the letter read.
Nonetheless, internet users don’t appear to be convinced by the assurances from the lab. 

“What is the truth? The collapse of trustworthiness of media and government is not only sad for the two parties, but also for us citizens,” said a user on Weibo commenting on the rumors. 

“Some might think the so-called rumors are just a prophecy ahead of our times,” said another.
Some “rumors” from the early days of the epidemic after all turned out not to be far from reality. 

Li Wenliang, a doctor, had told others about a cluster of cases of viral pneumonia before the outbreak had been made public, but was summoned by Wuhan police for “spreading rumors.” 

He later became infected himself, and his death turned him into a vivid symbol of the costs of the government’s opacity—prompting an outpouring of anger and grief, and rare public demands for freedom of speech and transparency from the government.
“With the government’s bungled handling of the epidemic in Wuhan, and the pain and uncertainty the epidemic and the efforts to cope with it have produced, public trust has clearly decreased,” said Professor Dali Yang, a political scientist at University of Chicago via email. 

“The death of Dr. Li was a milestone in shared grief in China.”
What now can be done to contain theories of a rogue lab? 

Probably not a whole lot, says Kajimoto.
“When the authorities and experts have the history of not being transparent, whatever they say could sound as if they are trying to hide something,” said the assistant professor. 

“In this case, publicly denying the link between the lab and Chinese coronavirus could even be construed as ‘evidence’ by people who believe in this conspiracy because denial is the ‘sign’ that the truth is hidden.”

China's Crimes Against Humanity

Chinese coronavirus bioweapon theory spreading
Outbreak had started in Wuhan facility, as first patient never went to wet market identified as source
By FRANK CHEN

A masked passenger walks in front of Wuhan Station before the city is locked down on January 23. 

A Wuhan lab affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences has sought to dispel rumors that it made and leaked the highly infectious pneumonic virus that led to the still-raging global outbreak. While Chinese dictator Xi Jinping was briefed about the public health threat by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in early January, the government decided against sounding the alarm because it did not want to “mar the festive vibe” during the Lunar New Year celebrations.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the provincial capital of Hubei, which is the ground zero of the contagion, has been thrust into the media spotlight by the allegation last week that it leaked bio-hazardous agents.

Posts circulating on WeChat and Weibo claim that a researcher at the institute was the first to be infected by the novel coronavirus, now called China Origin Virus ID-19 (Covid-19) by the World Health Organization.

The female virologist and a graduate from the institute, referred to as “patient zero,” had never visited the city’s shambolic wet market – also known as the “zoo” – where a range of wild animals were sold. 

The market has been identified by the authorities as the probable source of the deadly pathogen.
In a statement released on Sunday, the lab stressed that the researcher had left the city and was in good health, refusing to release more information about her for privacy reasons.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Wuhan Institute of Virology had leaked the Chinese coronavirus. 

The institute is said to be the nation’s only Biological Security Level 4-certified lab, the highest level in the hierarchy of biosafety and biocontainment procedures codified by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention. 

The Wuhan lab has the equipment and staff to handle the most infectious viruses, including Ebola.
Shi Zhengli, the institute’s lead researcher on bat-related viruses, said on her social media account that she “guaranteed with her own life” that the outbreak had nothing to do with the lab but was a “nemesis for the barbaric habits and lifestyle of some people – like eating wild game including bats.”
Shi’s team said at the end of January, when the acute respiratory disease started to strike down more people in Wuhan and the rest of Hubei, that bats could have been the initial host of the Chinese coronavirus and SARS virus. 

Patients line up in an outpatient department at a hospital in Wuhan. 

A woman wears a face mask as a preventative measure against the Chinese coronavirus, as she watches a race during the Hong Kong Gold Cup at the Sha Tin racecourse on February 16, 2020. 

Richard Ebright, a biology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told the BBC that genomic sequencing of the Chinese coronavirus showed no proof that it had been artificially modified, yet he could not rule out the possibility that the unfolding pandemic could be the result of a lab incident.
Ebright said the Chinese coronavirus was a cousin of one found in bats captured by the institute in caves in the southwestern province of Yunnan in 2003, and that samples had been kept in the Wuhan lab since 2013.
Also, a paper that appeared in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet at the end of last month has lent credibility to speculation about the origins of the Chinese virus. 

The paper quoted seven doctors at Wuhan’s Jinyintan Hospital as saying that the first patient admitted on December 1 had “never been to the wet market,” nor had there been any epidemiological link between the first patient and subsequent infection cases, based on the data from the first 41 patients treated there.
Furthermore, a note from the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology is seen as a tacit admission that some kind of incident may have occurred at the Wuhan lab.
On Saturday, the ministry issued a directive mandating more stringent handling of Chinese viruses and bioagents by all labs and research institutes. 

The document alluded to the slack oversight and management rampant at some facilities, and stressed that protection and decontamination must be beefed up now that more labs across the nation are intensifying their efforts to develop medicines to treat it and a vaccine to prevent it.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Ming Pao daily reported on Monday that the CCDC had sounded the alarm in a report on the emerging SARS-like outbreak submitted to the top leadership in early January. 

However, curbing the spread was not at the top of the agenda when Xi and other members of the party’s upper echelon sat down for a Politburo meeting on January 7. 

Citing its source, the broadsheet said top leaders were opposed to any contingency measures “that may mar the festive vibe and make the public panic.”
In a move seen as a bid to highlight Xi’s early involvement in combating the outbreak, state media revealed on Sunday that the president “gave specific instructions” to contain the spread in the January 7 meeting, amid people’s simmering exasperation with the state and local cadres’ tardy response to the public health crisis that has made more than 70,000 sick across the country as of Monday afternoon.

Gao Fu, chief of China’s CCDC. 

And even though the CCDC alerted Xi early on, its chief, Gao Fu, is still under fire for his public assurances last month that people were not likely to become infected as a result of normal human contact. 

Calls are being made for Gao, a veterinarian by training, to step down.

Made-In-China War Virus

China silent amid growing doubts over coronavirus origins
By Bill Gertz

Li Keqiang, center, speaks with medical workers at Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020. China on Monday expanded its sweeping efforts to contain a deadly virus, extending the Lunar New Year holiday to keep the public at home and avoid spreading infection. 

China’s government stood silent Monday in the face of growing scientific reports that the source of the deadly Wuhan virus outbreak did not originate solely from a seafood market in the city.
Xi Jinping faced mounting criticism on Chinese social media sites for failing to travel to the affected city in Hubei province. 

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang instead arrived in Wuhan on Monday and is heading efforts to confront the epidemic.
Wuhan’s mayor and the Communist Party secretary for the city of 11 million offered to resign amid criticism of their regional government’s mishandling of the deadly outbreak.
Suspicions about a link to a biological warfare leak in Wuhan have been raised because the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory handles deadly viruses and its civilian and military research are intertwined in China.

The Washington Times reported Friday that a former Israeli military intelligence analyst on the Chinese biological arms program said it is possible the disease escaped from one of two Chinese research facilities that are linked to China’s covert biological weapons program.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology National Biosafety Laboratory is China’s sole declared facility capable of conducting research on deadly viruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). 

China declared a second laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, as part of biological warfare research under the Biological Weapons Convention.
The State Department said in a report last year that it suspects China is working covertly on offensive biological weapons in violation of the convention.
A group of 29 Chinese researchers, writing in the British medical journal The Lancet, said the first person to become ill from the Wuhan virus was identified on Dec. 1 and had no link to the animal market. 

The magazine Science reported the findings of the study on Sunday.
“No epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases,” the report said. 

At least 13 victims of the virus had no apparent exposure to the seafood market. 

The market sold wild animals such as civet cats until it was closed on Jan. 1.
“That’s a big number, 13, with no link,” Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University, told Science.
Dr. Lucey, an infectious disease physician and adjunct professor of infectious diseases, told the online newsletter Science Speaks that China has offered no explanation for why some of the illnesses were not linked to the market.
“Infection must have occurred in November 2019 for the earliest reported patient with onset of symptoms Dec. 1,” he said.
“Whether this patient was infected from an animal or another person in November, directly or by [objects or materials which are likely to carry infection, such as clothes, utensils and furniture], his infection occurred at a location other than the Huanan seafood market.”

Mounting anger
Public anger is increasing over the government’s handling of the rapidly spreading virus, according to reports from news outlets and social media inside China.
At least 80 people have died in China, most in the central province of Hubei, and more than 2,700 are infected. 

The death toll and infection rate could be higher because China’s government is known to censor news reports and official information. 

The U.S. and 12 other countries have reported cases within their borders.
Five British medical researchers stated in a report that if the spread of the disease is not controlled, “we expect further outbreaks to occur in other Chinese cities, and that infections will continue to be exported to international destinations at an increasing rate.”
By Feb. 4, “our model predicts the number of infected people in Wuhan to be greater than 250,000,” they said. 

The researchers were identified as Jonathan M. Read, Jessica R.E. Bridgen and Chris P. Jewell of the Center for Health I
nformatics at Lancaster University; Derek A.T. Cummings of the Department of Biology and Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida; and Antonia Ho of the University of Glasgow Center for Virus Research.

“We predict the cities with the largest outbreaks elsewhere in China to be Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chongqing and Chengdu,” they stated.Chinese social media posts on the microblogging platform Weibo have questioned why Xi did not visit Wuhan. 

Many of the social media posts criticizing the Chinese leader were couched in coded language that did not mention the president directly.
Other social media posts criticized Wuhan officials’ efforts to contain the epidemic.
The lack of information from China about the disease is triggering widespread fears of a potential global disaster similar to the flu pandemic of 1918 that killed tens of millions of people.
The virus outbreak, scientists say, is now believed to have begun in November or early December — weeks earlier than initial Chinese health officials’ claims about the first reported case in mid-December.
A senior State Department official told reporters last week that Chinese secrecy surrounding the new virus is similar to the mishandling of the 2003 outbreak of SARS, a similar coronavirus.
“I do believe that the concern you see both inside China and internationally is a reflection of what we’ve seen in the past — 2003 with SARS, and a number of other issues — where the government has been slow to respond out of fear of embarrassment, or making things look worse than they are, and that reluctance to respond in a rapid manner again doesn’t give the global community a secure feeling for this being managed inside China,” the official said.

Tracking the virus
Georgetown’s Dr. Lucey made no reference to a biological warfare laboratory as a possible source of the virus, but his hypothesis is that the first appearance of the Wuhan virus did not come from the seafood market and that it was spreading from person to person in October or November.
“Thus, the presumed rapid spread of the virus apparently for the first time from the Huanan seafood market in December did not occur,” Dr. Lucey said. 

“Instead the virus was already silently spreading in Wuhan hidden amidst many other patients with pneumonia at this time of year.”
He suggested that the virus may have spread from infected animals in other markets inside or outside Wuhan or along a supply chain of infected animals.
One of the Chinese authors of the study published in The Lancet, Bin Cao, told the newsletter ScienceInsider that he welcomed criticism by Dr. Lucey.
“Now it seems clear that seafood market is not the only origin of the virus,” he said. 

“But to be honest, we still do not know where the virus came from now.”
China’s government has said little on the Wuhan virus.

Chinese state-controlled media have also provided only limited coverage of the disease and its impact.

Chinese Self-Genocide

Coronavirus originated in PLA lab linked to secret China's biowarfare program
By Bill Gertz
Hospital staff wash the emergency entrance of Wuhan Medical Treatment Center, where some infected with a new virus are being treated, in Wuhan, China, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2020. The number of cases of a new coronavirus from Wuhan has risen to over 400 in China health authorities said Wednesday. 

The deadly animal-borne coronavirus spreading globally may have originated in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan linked to China’s covert biological weapons program, said an Israeli biological warfare analyst.
Radio Free Asia last week rebroadcast a Wuhan television report from 2015 showing China’s most advanced virus research laboratory, known the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

The laboratory is the only declared site in China capable of working with deadly viruses.
Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese biological warfare, said the institute is linked to Beijing’s covert bio-weapons program.
“Certain laboratories in the institute have been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility of the Chinese BW alignment,” Mr. Shoham told The Washington Times.
Work on biological weapons is conducted as part of dual civilian-military research and is “definitely covert,” he said in an email.
Mr. Shoham holds a doctorate in medical microbiology. 

From 1970 to 1991, he was a senior analyst with Israeli military intelligence for biological and chemical warfare in the Middle East and worldwide. 

He held the rank of lieutenant colonel.
China has denied having any offensive biological weapons, but a State Department report last year revealed suspicions of covert biological warfare work.
A Chinese Embassy spokesman did not return an email seeking comment.
Chinese authorities said they do not know the origin of the coronavirus, which has killed at least 80 and infected thousands.
Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state-controlled media that initial signs indicated the virus originated from wild animals sold at a seafood market in Wuhan.
One ominous sign, said a U.S. official, is that false rumors circulating on the Chinese internet claim the virus is part of a U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons. 

That could indicate China is preparing propaganda outlets to counter any charges that the new coronavirus escaped from one of Wuhan’s civilian or defense research laboratories.
The World Health Organization is calling the microbe novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV. 

At a meeting Thursday in Geneva, the organization stopped short of declaring a public health emergency of international concern.
China has deployed military forces to Wuhan to halt all travel out of the city of 11 million people in an effort to contain the outbreak of the virus, which causes pneumonialike symptoms.
The Wuhan institute has studied coronaviruses including the strain that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), H5N1 influenza virus, Japanese encephalitis and dengue. 

Researchers at the institute also have studied the germ that causes anthrax, a biological agent once developed in Russia.
“Coronaviruses [particularly SARS] have been studied in the institute and are held therein,” Mr. Shoham said. 

“SARS is included within the Chinese BW program, at large, and is dealt with in several pertinent facilities.”
It is not known whether the institute’s coronaviruses are specifically included in China’s biological weapons program but it is possible, he said.
Asked whether the new coronavirus may have leaked, Mr. Shoham said: “In principle, outward virus infiltration might take place either as leakage or as an indoor unnoticed infection of a person that normally went out of the concerned facility. This could have been the case with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
After researchers sequence the genome of the new coronavirus, they might be able to determine or suggest its origin or source.

Biological weapons convention
Mr. Shoham, now with the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Israel, said the Wuhan virology institute is the only declared site in China known as P4 for pathogen level 4. 

That status indicates the institute uses the strictest safety standards to prevent the spread of the most dangerous and exotic microbes being studied.
The former Israeli military intelligence doctor also said suspicions were raised about the Wuhan Institute of Virology when a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada improperly sent to China samples of what he described as some of the deadliest viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus.
In a July article in the journal Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, Mr. Shoham said the Wuhan institute was one of four Chinese laboratories engaged in some aspects of biological weapons development.

He said the secure Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory at the institute was engaged in research on the Ebola, Nipah and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses.
The Wuhan virology institute is under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but certain laboratories within it “have linkage with the PLA or BW-related elements within the Chinese defense establishment,” he said.
In 1993, China declared a second facility, the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, as one of eight biological warfare research facilities covered by the Biological Weapons Convention, which China joined in 1985.The Wuhan Institute of Biological Products is a civilian facility but is linked to the Chinese defense establishment. 

Mr. Shoham said it is thought to be involved in the Chinese Biological Weapons Convention program. 

China’s vaccine against SARS is probably produced there.
“This means the SARS virus is held and propagated there, but it is not a new coronavirus unless the wild type has been modified, which is not known and cannot be speculated at the moment,” he said.
The annual State Department report on arms treaty compliance stated last year that China engaged in activities that could support biological warfare.
“Information indicates that the People’s Republic of China engaged during the reporting period in biological activities with potential dual-use applications, which raises concerns regarding its compliance with the BWC,” said the report, adding that the United States suspects China failed to eliminate its biological warfare program as required by the treaty.
“The United States has compliance concerns with respect to Chinese military medical institutions’ toxin research and development because of the potential dual-use applications and their potential as a biological threat,” the report said.
The biosafety lab is about 20 miles from the Hunan Seafood Market, which reports from China say may have been the origin point of the virus.