Dr. Yuan Zhiming, the veteran director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the P4 biolab that’s at the centre of the back and forth accusations between China and the US regarding the origins of the novel coronavirus, has debunked Western media claims suggesting that the virus may have escaped from his laboratory.
“As people who carry out virus studies, we clearly know what kind of virus research is going on in the institute and how the institute manages viruses and samples. As we said early on, there’s no way this virus came out from us. We have a strict regulatory regime, we have a code of conduct for research, so we are confident of that,” Yuan insisted, speaking to China’s CGTN on Saturday.
Saying the rumours about his institute’s possible involvement were not unexpected, given its location in Wuhan, the epicentre of the pandemic, Yuan said it’s unfortunate that some institutions have attempted to turn these rumours into a weapon to deliberately misinform people.
“It’s bad when some are deliberately trying to mislead people. US Senator Tom Cotton said earlier that the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Washington Post and several other reporters wrote about the virus coming from the Wuhan lab. They have no evidence, or knowledge, this is entirely based on speculation,” Yuan stressed.
The veteran scientist believes that while part of the US campaign of accusations may be aimed at confusing people or even interfering with China’s anti-pandemic response, another part of it may be based on a desire to interfere with the institute’s scientific activities as a whole. Unfortunately, he says, “as long as the pandemic continues, especially in other countries, such doubts and disharmony will not go away”.
On Saturday, Fox News reported that the Trump administration has begun a ‘full-scale investigation’ into reports that the Wuhan biolab was responsible for the COVID-19 outbreak, with Washington said to be turning to intelligence agencies and analysts to create “an accurate picture of what happened” Fox’s sources apparently also discounted earlier media claims that the virus is man-made, saying genome mapping has shown that the bug was “not genetically altered".
Yuan confirmed that he too believes that the idea of the virus being manmade is out of the question. “From my understanding of virology, there is no evidence to prove that the virus has artificial or synthetic traces. Besides, some scientists believe that to synthesize a virus requires extraordinary intelligence and workload. So I have never believed that we humans would have the capability at this time to synthesize such a virus,” he said.
Lab at the Epicentre of Global Scandal
Last week, US media outlets including the Washington Post and Fox News reported, citing sources, that the P4 lab in Wuhan may be the point of origin of the new coronavirus. President Trump confirmed that the US was “looking into” the claims. China’s Foreign Ministry blasted the allegations, saying that the attempts to blame China were meant to “confuse the public, divert attention and shirk responsibility” in Washington’s own uninspiring response to the pandemic.
In its story, Fox News alleged that the virus was accidentally released by Chinese scientists attempting to prove their capability to identify and combat deadly viruses just as well as their US counterparts. The Washington Post, for its part, reported that the lab had lax safety standards going back to at least early 2019.
The Wuhan lab has also been the focus of controversy in Washington, amid reports that the National Institutes of Health, a US government agency, had transferred $3.7 million in grant money to the lab to conduct experiments on bats for the purposes of examining how coronaviruses are transmitted.
The attempts by the world’s economic superpowers to blame one another for the COVID-19 pandemic are only logical, given that the virus has now been blamed for over 161,000 deaths and 2.3 million infections worldwide, not to mention the trillions of dollars in damage it has done to the global economy.
