The Wall Street Journal published an article on Monday citing a national laboratory report suggesting that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab, a hypothesis that has been rejected by preeminent scientists around the world and described as "extremely unlikely" by a WHO study team after field research. This is a fresh move for the US media, as it fails to present any new data or evidence, according to the source close to the WHO team, who believes the US is trying to turn the scientific question into a pure political game.
The laboratory report cited by the WSJ came from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. It was prepared in May 2020, and was drawn on by the State Department when it conducted an inquiry into the pandemic's origins during the final months of the Trump administration, the WSJ report said.
The lab has several staff working on tech and biotech but also many who work on projects related to intelligence, the source told the Global Times, noting that this would lead to their analyses requiring security clearance.
"The thing about this report is that even if it contained any new information, it is not possible to share it publicly, so it doesn't help at all," the source said, referring to the report from the US national laboratory.
The WSJ published an 'exclusive report' weeks ago, citing a Trump-era US intelligence report on sick staff at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, indicating those researchers shared symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and seasonable illness. Yuan Zhiming, director of the institute's Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, however, refuted the report and called it "an outright lie that came from nowhere".
This article was originally published on Global Times website.