Coronavirus was sequenced weeks before China disclosed existence, new documents showhttps://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healthcare/2801203/covid-genetic-sequence-hidden/The documents obtained by the committee from the Department of Health and Human Services indicate that the genetic sequence for SARS-CoV-2 was submitted to the National Institutes of Health database by Dr. Lili Ren.
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Records indicate that Ren submitted the initial sequence for SARS-CoV-2 to GenBank, the NIH’s database, on Dec. 28, 2019. On Dec. 31, Ren was notified by NIH staff that she was missing technical information required for publication, and her submission was eventually deleted.
HHS withheld the sequencing information from the committee for seven months, only releasing the documents after threats of subpoena.
Chinese Lab Mapped Covid-19 Virus Two Weeks before Sharing Information Globally, Documents Revealhttps://www.nationalreview.com/news/chinese-lab-mapped-covid-19-virus-two-weeks-before-sharing-information-globally-documents-reveal/Chinese researcher in Beijing uploaded a nearly complete sequence of the Covid virus structure to a U.S. database run by the National Institute of Health on December 28, 2019, two weeks before Beijing shared the viral sequence with the rest of the world, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services documents recently obtained by a House committee reveal.
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When Beijing shared the SARS-CoV-2 sequence with the World Health Organization on January 11, 2020, two full weeks had elapsed since the virus was sequenced by a researcher at the Institute of Pathogen Biology in Beijing, an arm of the state-affiliated Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and People’s Liberation Army.
Those two weeks represent a crucial period in the evolution of the pandemic, as the international health community scrambled to assess and respond to the burgeoning viral threat. In late 2019, scientists across the globe were racing to understand the viral disease that would eventually kill millions.
During that period, Chinese officials still described the disease outbreak in Wuhan, China, as a viral pneumonia “of unknown cause” to the greater public. The latest congressional investigation has again raised questions about what China knew in the crucial early days of the pandemic.
I'm not sure how much discussion potential this story has, but it is pretty important and fills in some gaps in what we have known previously. It's funny how this didn't come out in 2020 and had to be pried out of HHS/NIH. It's almost as if they were covering something up because it complicated something they were trying to do. Anyway, here's a timeline of what we "know", with new information in red:
Mid-Late November 2019: First documented probable Covid patients in Wuhan;
First or second week of December 2019: Wuhan physicians realize they are seeing an outbreak of an unfamiliar disease;
December 24, 2019: A doctor at a Wuhan hospital recommends that colleagues take special precautions when working with patients with certain symptoms;
December 28, 2019: Dr. Lilli Ren uploaded the sequence of the virus eventually called SARS-CoV-2 to the US NIH GenBank database;December 31, 2019: Chinese health officials ordered labs that had been working on sequencing the SARS-CoV-2 virus to cease their work and destroy their test samples;
December 31, 2019: A Chinese language publication from Wuhan was found via the Internet by which westerners first learned of the disease eventually called Covid;
December 31, 2019: NIH staff notified Dr. Lilli Ren that the data she had submitted could not be published until she provided certain missing technical information. Dr. Ren did not respond, and the sequence data she had submitted was eventually deleted;January 11, 2020: The SARS-CoV-2 sequence was shared with WHO;
January 20, 2020: After nearly 3 weeks of denial, WHO and China confirmed that human-to-human transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was occurring.
This timeline shows that China withheld information about: the outbreak in Wuhan for some 3 weeks; the sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus for 2 weeks (with an asterisk); information that human-to-human transmission was occurring, for over 4 weeks (counting from when Wuhan doctors were warning each other to take precautions. Regarding that asterisk, while the virus sequence was uploaded to the NIH database on December 28, the submission was incomplete, and China's delay in letting the world know about Covid prevented recognition of the significance of the sequence.
China's information withholding delayed worldwide response to Covid by some 3 weeks; delayed recognition of the seriousness of Covid for some 3 weeks beyond that; delayed work on Covid vaccines for two weeks.
