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US 2018 cable triggered claims Covid-19 epidemic may have started in Wuhan lab
Officials of the US embassy China, who wrote this cable in January 2018 after a visit to the lab, had raised concerns in this state department cable about “serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory”.
The United States has released an internal diplomatic cable that had triggered speculation by senior officials of the Trump administration that the Covid-19 epidemic might have started because of an accident at a virology lab in Wuhan, a Chinese city that became the epicenter of the outbreak last December.
Officials of the US embassy China, who wrote this cable in January 2018 after a visit to the lab, had raised concerns in this state department cable about “serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory”.
And, though the lab could conduct study SARS-like coronaviruses extracted from bats, it needed the permission of designated authority to research strains that could infect humans, officials wrote in the cable, whose release was secured by the Washington Post this week through a lawsuit.
But the cable did not prove or disprove the lab origin theory of the outbreak. “I don’t see any evidence to support the idea that this was released deliberately or inadvertently,” Ian Lipkin, the director of Columbia University’s Center for Infection and Immunity, told the Washington Post after being being made aware of the content of the cable.“You can’t just say someone is guilty of accidentally releasing a virus. You have to prove it.”
The Trump administration, however, appeared to have made that determination already in an effort to deflect blame for the spiraling infections and fatalities in the United States. President Donald Trump said in May he had a “high degree of confidence” that it had indeed started from the Chinese lab. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo followed up claiming “enormous evidence”.
But, also in May, the US intelligence community punctured that theory. The office of the director of National Intelligence said in a statement it was still investigating outbreak started through contacts with infected animals “or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan”.
The Trump administration has not pushed the lab theory much in recent days, but it has blamed China for the outbreak, broke off ties with the WHO accusing it of being complicit in China’s cover-up of it responsibility for the outbreak. Trump and Pompeo have called the virus the “Chinese virus” and the “Wuhan virus”.
Covid-19 infections, meantime, are soaring in the United States, with nearly 78,000 new cases reported in the last 24 hours and 843 deaths. Texas, Florida, Arizona and other southern states are the worst hit in this second surge. ICUs are running to full capacity in some of their worst affected counties, and, in a repeated of the grim situation in New York some weeks ago, refrigerated trucks are being used to store bodies because of overwhelmed morgues.
