Report: Three Wuhan Institute Of Virology Scientists Were Hospitalized In November 2019
Michael Ginsberg
General Assignment Reporter
May 23, 2021 5:48 PM ET
Three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) were reportedly hospitalized with an unknown infection in November 2019.
The researchers were hospitalized around the time COVID-19 is believed to have begun circulating in China, according to a United States intelligence report obtained by The Wall Street Journal. The report raises new questions about the origins of the virus, which some researchers, intelligence officials, and politicians believe is likely to have escaped from the WIV.
The Chinese government claims that doctors diagnosed the first COVID-19 infection on Dec. 8, 2019, but reporting from the South China Morning Post suggested that the first infection was really diagnosed on Nov. 17.
A State Department fact sheet released on Jan. 15 claimed that “several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak. The symptoms were reportedly consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.” The fact sheet did not provide information about the number of sick researchers, or more exact dates of infection.
Dr. Shi Zhengli, a lead researcher on bat-based coronaviruses at WIV, denies that COVID-19 escaped from her lab, although she previously said that she did “not slept a wink for days” over concerns that it originated with her team.
Dr. Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in April 2020 that Shi’s “denial is not a refutation. Especially not a denial based on ‘nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilized living habits.'”
Ebright has said that a lab leak introducing COVID-19 into the general population “cannot—and should not—be dismissed.”
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https://dailycaller.com/2021/05/23/3-wuhan-lab-scientists-hospitalized-2019-us-intel/