Photographer: Go Nakamura / Getty Images
Photographer: Go Nakamura / Getty Images
The State Department said on Friday it had new information suggesting that the Covid-19 pandemic could have emerged from a Chinese laboratory and not through contact with infected animals, the latest shot in the Trump administration’s efforts to pressure Beijing over the origins of the virus.
Specifically, the U.S. said it had obtained new evidence that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in the fall of 2019, before the first case of the outbreak in the neighboring city was identified, with symptoms that would be consistent with Covid-19 or common seasonal diseases .
The department said that China’s lack of transparency about the origin of the pandemic more than a year ago, as well as efforts to mask initial deficiencies in the country’s response to the outbreak, make it difficult to draw clear conclusions. But the brief unsigned statement by the United States – less than a week before the end of the Trump administration – did not provide data to support its claims.
“The virus may have arisen naturally from human contact with infected animals, spreading in a pattern consistent with a natural epidemic,” according to the State Department. “Alternatively, a laboratory accident could resemble a natural outbreak if the initial exposure included only a few individuals and was made worse by asymptomatic infection.”
A State Department spokesman declined to give further details when asked to comment.
China has repeatedly rejected accusations that the virus may have left a laboratory. The United States did not say how it obtained the new disease information in the laboratory.
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The comments, in a State Department newsletter, come at a time when China faces criticism for initially preventing some members of a World Health Organization mission from entering China as part of an effort to trace the origin of Covid-19 , saying that they had not approved health care screenings. Although the experts obtained authorization, China had already been criticized by the WHO for delaying the mission’s plans to visit the country.
China has been under scrutiny since the outbreak exploded in and around Wuhan, but the Trump administration has also sought to attribute more blame to authorities in Beijing after the pandemic exploded in the U.S. and deaths soared. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo often refer to the disease as “China virus”, “China plague” and “Wuhan virus”.
For its part, China is mounting a campaign to raise doubts about the origin of the virus within its borders. State media released research suggesting there had been cases in Italy and the United States prior to Wuhan’s, and suggested that the pathogen could have entered the country through frozen food or packaging.
On Friday, it was announced that 2 million people died worldwide from the outbreak, with nearly 400,000 deaths in the United States