Wuhan pathogen lab rubbishes Trump’s coronavirus leak theory as pure fabrication: 'Didn't even know it existed'
Wuhan Institute of Virology's director, Wang Yanyi, has slammed the claims that the deadly novel coronavirus came from his lab, calling it "pure fabrication". Yanyi made the statement while addressing Chinese media on Sunday, May 24, and added that his team did not even know about the existence of the virus. We had "no knowledge before that nor had we ever encountered, researched, or kept the virus," he said.
"We didn’t even know about the existence of the virus, so how could it be leaked from our lab when we never had it?" the director said. Although scientists researching the origin of the pandemic have stated that it is highly likely that the virus was based from bats to an intermediate species being sold at a wet market in Wuhan, multiple people have propagated a conspiracy theory that it instead originated from the city lab, including President Donald Trump.
Trump and his secretary of state Mike Pompeo recently stated that the US government has "enormous evidence" suggesting that the virus leaked from the said Wuhan laboratory. The Wuhan lab is one of the two sites in China which has clearance to study the most dangerous pathogens found across the world.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) had also denounced the conspiracy theory earlier this month, stating that it had no evidence supporting the "speculative claims". The health agency's statement came shortly after Trump's suggestion that the WHO, which praised China's efforts of fighting the virus, was too trusting of the country.
Speculations surrounding the Wuhan lab virus fuelled after an intelligence dossier, drawn up by the Five Eyes security alliance, leaked, claiming 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.