Most countries have gotten the COVID-19 pandemic somewhat under control while some countries are still struggling with death tolls piling up. The pandemic hit the world hard, causing a lot of harm to people’s jobs and health. It’s been almost 2 years but no one still doesn’t know how it all started. We know it originated somewhere in China but the origins of the virus still have some experts pulling their hair.
Many conspiracy theories believe that the virus was engineered in a lab while people believe it to be just a freak of nature. The most popular theory is that the virus was engineered in a lab in Wuhan, China. However, no one knows if its spreading was by mistake or it was according to some plan. Many countries have been conducting their own investigations into the matter.
The World Health Organization also conducted its own investigation into the origins of the coronavirus but it concluded that it was extremely unlikely that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They couldn’t find any proof that the virus was in the lab. However, many scientists and researchers aren’t satisfied with the investigation and still believe that there must have been some human factors behind the virus.
Thus many countries have been conducting their own investigations. The US intelligence’s stance is that virus did originate somewhere in Wuhan. They repeated their stand at a US open hearing on global threats on 15th April. They stated that the hypothesis that the virus was leaked by a lab cannot be ruled out. They showed that they would not accept the WHO’s conclusion.
Recently a new report has just surfaced from the US intelligence that says that many lab staff in Wuhan were found ill even before the pandemic started. The report appeared in the last days of the Trump administration. It said that three Wuhan lab staff became ill with symptoms matching those of COVID-19. This report was cited in an article by The Wall Street Journal.
This fact was mostly known before but the illness was said to be because of seasonal cases of flu which have similar symptoms to COVID-19. But this does prove that the WHO didn’t really have enough evidence to back its conclusion so some experts still suspect that the incident is related to the Wuhan lab.
The recent claims have led China to speak out. China dismissed all the lab leak theories. Yuan Zhiming, the director of the institute’s Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory told Global Times that the article by The Wall Street Journal was a complete lie. “Those claims are groundless. The lab has not been aware of this situation, and I don’t even know where such information came from”.