Photographer: Go Nakamura / Getty Images
Photographer: Go Nakamura / Getty Images
The State Department said Friday that it had new information suggesting that the Covid-19 pandemic may have arisen from a Chinese laboratory and not through contact with infected animals, the latest salvation of the Trump administration’s efforts to press Beijing on the origins of the virus.
Specifically, the United States said it had obtained new evidence that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in the fall of 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak in the surrounding city, with symptoms that said they were compatible with any of the Covid-19s. or common seasonal illnesses.
The department said China’s lack of transparency about the origin of the pandemic more than a year ago, as well as efforts to mask early deficiencies in the country’s response to the outbreak, make it difficult to draw clear conclusions. . But the brief, unsigned statement issued by the United States – at least a week before the end of the Trump administration – did not provide data to support its claims.
“The virus could have arisen naturally from human contact with infected animals, spreading according to a pattern compatible with a natural epidemic,” according to the State Department. “Alternatively, a laboratory accident could look like a natural outbreak if the initial exposure included only a few individuals and was complicated by an asymptomatic infection.”
A State Department spokesman declined to elaborate when asked for further comments.
China has repeatedly denied allegations that the virus could have come from a laboratory. The U.S. did not say how it obtained the new disease information in the lab.
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The comments, in a State Department briefing, appear when China faces criticism for initially preventing some members of a World Health Organization mission from entering China as part of an effort to trace the origin of Covid-19, saying they had not passed health projections. Although the permission of the experts was finally obtained, the WHO had already been criticized by the WHO for delaying the mission’s plans to visit the country.
China has been under scrutiny since the outbreak broke out in and around Wuhan, but the Trump administration also tried to place more blame on Beijing authorities after the pandemic took off in the U.S. and deaths skyrocketed. . President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo often refer to the disease as the “China virus,” the “China plague,” and the “Wuhan virus.”
For its part, China is launching a campaign to question the virus that originated at its borders. State media have reproduced investigations suggesting that there were cases in Italy and the United States that preceded those in Wuhan and suggested that the pathogen could have entered the country through frozen food or packaging.
On Friday it was announced that 2 million people had died worldwide due to the outbreak, with nearly 400,000 dead in the US