China LIED about coronavirus transmission, killed whistleblowers and hurt vaccine efforts, leaked dossier claims
A leaked intelligence dossier, drawn up by the Five Eyes security alliance, has claimed that China was not honest about the human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus, made whistle-blowers from the region disappear, and refused to assist foreign nations in developing a vaccine for the deadly virus.
The Five Eyes (FVEY), an intelligence alliance comprising the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, in its 15-page document, deemed China's secrecy over the pandemic "an assault on international transparency" and highlighted the regime's cover-up tactics. The dossier claimed that the Chinese government silenced its most vocal critics and expunged any skepticism about the regime's handling of the pandemic from the Internet.
Beijing has received scrutiny over claims that it suppressed the scale of the initial outbreak of COVID-19 and did not give enough time for other nations to react to the pandemic. President Donald Trump has been leading the backlash against China, even floating a conspiracy theory that the outbreak could have started from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Meanwhile, UK, also speculated on the origins of the virus on Friday, May 1, with Downing Street saying that "there are questions to be answered."
The memo of the documents obtained by the Australian Saturday Telegraph, reportedly claims to have found evidence that the virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, close to the wet market it is widely believed by scientists to have come from. The paper also claims that Beijing attempted to bury all signs of the disease by "destroying" lab samples and bleaching market stalls.
The allegations of a mass cover-up in the documents state that Chinese researchers of bat-linked viruses had studied a sample with a 96 percent genetic match to the novel coronavirus as early as 2013, adding that their "risky" research concluded in 2015 that the infection was transmissible to humans from bats. The document claims that this information, however, was "kept silent" by the Chinese state.
The organization claims to have found a series of cover-ups by the Chinese authorities, including the "deadly denial of human-to-human transmission," the silencing or "disappearing" of a researcher who had attempted to raise an alarm about the infection disease, hiding or destruction of evidence of the outbreak, and a refusal to hand live virus samples to other countries to help them develop vaccines for Covid-19.
According to the outlet, the memo also mentioned a partnership between Chinese and Australian labs where a research was conducted linked to a bat-derived coronavirus that could not be cured. The document reportedly stated that Beijing began covering up the seriousness of the outbreak since early December.
"Despite evidence of human-human transmission from early December, PRC authorities denied it until January 20," the document reportedly states. "The World Health Organisation does the same. Yet officials in Taiwan raised concerns as early as December 31, as did experts in Hong Kong on January 4."
President Trump, earlier this week, had claimed during a White House press conference that Covid-19 may have been created in a Chinese lab.
When he was asked whether he has seen proof of the virus' origins in the institute, he had said: "Yes I have. Yes I have." However, he did not divulge what the evidence was. Scientists, since then, have refuted his claims, stating that this is a debunked conspiracy theory.
Meanwhile, Australia has maintained that it is most likely that the virus came from the Wuhan live animal market, giving its possibility of originating from the lab a 5 percent chance.