China accuses US of hyping up lab leak theory after WSJ report

BEIJING • China has accused the United States of promoting theories that the coronavirus escaped from a high-security lab in Wuhan, as a fresh report about sick workers at the facility prompted Beijing to reaffirm denials.

"The report that you mentioned about three people getting sick, that is not true," Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular briefing in Beijing yesterday.

Mr Zhao was responding to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report that a trio of researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology - a lab in the city where the first Covid-19 outbreak was identified - had fallen ill and sought hospital care in November 2019, a month before China reported the first cases of the deadly pathogen.

The WSJ article, which cited a US intelligence report, came on the eve of a meeting of the decision-making body of the World Health Organisation (WHO), which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into the origins of Covid-19.

The Wuhan facility has previously denied claims of workers getting sick, including a US State Department fact sheet published in January that asserts that several researchers from the institute became sick in the autumn of 2019.

Mr Zhao said: "The United States continues to hype up the lab leak theory. Does it care about traceability or is it just trying to distract attention?"

China has sought to frame the claims as conspiracy theories created to divert attention from the US government's own handling of the coronavirus, and suggested that the Fort Detrick military base in Maryland should be investigated.

While the WHO-led investigation in China earlier this year found it was "extremely unlikely" that the coronavirus came from a laboratory leak, scientists have sought more data from China on early cases.

Following the probe, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that it did not adequately analyse the possibility of a lab accident, adding that he is ready to deploy additional resources.

Asked about the report, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said that the organisation's technical teams were now deciding on the next steps. He said further study was needed into the role of animal markets as well as the lab leak hypothesis.

A US National Security Council spokesman had no comment on the report, but said that US President Joe Biden's administration continued to have "serious questions about the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic, including its origins within the People's Republic of China".

She said the US government was working with the WHO and other member states to support an expert-driven evaluation of the pandemic's origins "that is free from interference or politicisation".

"We're not going to make pronouncements that prejudge an ongoing WHO study into the source of Sars-CoV-2, but we've been clear that sound and technically credible theories should be thoroughly evaluated by international experts," she said.

The WSJ article said the previously undisclosed US intelligence report provides fresh details on the number of researchers affected, the timing of their illnesses, and their hospital visits.

The newspaper said current and former officials familiar with the intelligence expressed a range of views about the strength of the report's supporting evidence, with one unnamed person saying it needed "further investigation and additional corroboration".

BLOOMBERG, REUTERS