Nearly a year after the day the first COVID-19 cases were reported in China, Beijing is restricting research on the origins of the pandemic, while actively promoting marginal theories that it could have originated outside the country.
The government is distributing funds to scientists – affiliated with the military – who are researching the origins of the virus in southern China. It is also monitoring its findings and requiring the publication of any data or research to be approved by a new task force administered by the China cabinet, under direct orders from President Xi Jinping, according to a broad investigation by the Associated Press.
A worker wearing a mask appears behind the construction barrier with a notice showing a bat and advocating that people not eat wild animals at Kunming airport in southern China’s Yunnan province on Thursday, December 3, 2020
(AP)
As a result, very little has been released and the authorities are severely limiting information and impeding cooperation with international scientists.
“What did they find?” asked Gregory Gray, an epidemiologist at Duke University who oversees a laboratory in China that studies the transmission of infectious diseases from animals to people. “Perhaps their data was not conclusive or perhaps they deleted the data for some political reason.”
The AP investigation revealed a pattern of top-down government secrecy and control that delayed warnings about the pandemic, blocked information sharing with the World Health Organization and hindered initial testing. Scientists familiar with China’s public health system say the same practices apply to sensitive research.
“They just select people they can trust, those they can control,” said a public health expert who works with China’s CDC. “Military teams and others are working hard on this, but whether it gets published depends on the outcome.”
POMPEO SLAMS CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY FOR SENTENCE JOURNALIST WHO CARES FOR 4-YEAR CORONAVIRUS IN CHAIN
Some Chinese scientists say that little has been shared simply because nothing significant has been discovered. Even controlling Chinese research, Chinese officials have promoted theories that suggested the virus originated outside the country.
The government chose Bi Yuhai, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to lead the research on origins with a donation of $ 230,000, the records show. A co-authored article by Bi suggested that an outbreak in a Beijing market in June may have been caused by packages of contaminated frozen fish from Europe.
China’s government-controlled media used the theory to suggest that the original outbreak in Wuhan could have started with seafood imported from abroad – an idea that international scientists reject.
The Chinese government is also limiting and controlling the search for patient zero by re-testing old flu samples.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPLICATION
Chinese hospitals collect thousands of samples from patients with flu-like symptoms every week and place them in freezers. They could easily be tested again for COVID-19, although the policy could determine whether the results would be made public, said Ray Yip, the founding director of the US CDC office in China.
“They would be crazy if they didn’t,” said Yip. “The political leadership will wait for this information to see, does this information make China look stupid or not? … If it makes China look stupid, they won’t.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.