Laboratory researchers in Wuhan fell ill with symptoms similar to Covid-19 in the autumn of 2019, according to information released by Washington as the Trump administration pressures Beijing over the origins of the pandemic.
The US State Department said it had new evidence of illness at the facility in the Chinese city where the Coronavirus outbreak first came to world attention a year ago.
Washington said the material, which it did not disclose, heightened suspicions that the pandemic could have begun at the Wuhan Institute of Virology – and not as the result of natural contact between humans and infected animals.
Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, said the illnesses in autumn 2019 appeared to contradict Chinese claims that no-one at the laboratory fell ill with Covid-19 prior to the pandemic.
He called on a team from the World Health Organisation which arrived in Wuhan on Thursday to investigate the origins of the outbreak to pursue the new information.
Mr Pompeo said: “Beijing continues today to withhold vital information that scientists need to protect the world from this deadly virus, and the next one.”
While other western governments have been reluctant to directly accuse China of concealing some sort of accidental laboratory leak of a Covid-19-like virus, the Trump administration has been highly critical of Beijing and appears to be doing everything it can to pursue this agenda in its final days.
According to the State Department, scientists in Wuhan were experimenting in 2019 with RaTG13 – a Coronavirus found in bats which is a close relation to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
Washington alleges that the work was being carried out “under conditions that increased the risk for accidental and potentially unwitting exposure” and researchers subsequently fell ill with Covid-like symptoms.
In a statement, the State Department said: “The virus could have emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals, spreading in a pattern consistent with a natural epidemic.
“Alternatively, a laboratory accident could resemble a natural outbreak if the initial exposure included only a few individuals and was compounded by asymptomatic infection.”
China has strongly denied any link between the Wuhan laboratory and the evolution of Covid-19. It has in recent weeks suggested that the virus could have originated in another country.
