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UNITED STATES
Brinken asked Yang Jiechi to investigate the source of the virus: China still has a way if China does not cooperate
June 12, 2021 04:46
Lin Fengt
WASHINGTON—
The United States has formally proposed to Beijing to conduct the second phase of the traceability investigation of the new coronavirus in China. When U.S. Secretary of State Blincoln had a phone call with Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in charge of foreign affairs, on June 11, he asked China to strengthen cooperation and transparency on the issue of the traceability of the new crown virus, including the expert-led World Health Organization (WHO) in China. ) The second stage virus traceability investigation. Experts said that even if China does not cooperate, the United States has a way to initiate related investigations.
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Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, was one of the first scientists to propose that the new coronavirus may come from a laboratory leak or accident. He and some other internationally renowned scientists signed an open letter to the WHO in March this year, arguing that there were flaws in the WHO-China joint virus traceability investigation and did not solve the hypothesis that the virus came from laboratory escape.
In an interview with Voice of America, Ebright said that the scientific community is currently divided on whether the virus came from nature or escaped from the laboratory because the current evidence does not deny the theory of laboratory leakage.
He said: "There is no scientific evidence that allows us to choose between the two possibilities of natural spillover origin and laboratory spillover origin. All scientific evidence and all other safety evidences are equally in line with these two possibilities. . There has never been a scientific consensus to the contrary."
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Ebright said that investigating whether the new coronavirus originated in a laboratory is beyond the scope of science, and that the investigation of the virus laboratory's leak theory should be completed by forensic investigation.
He said: "The answer to this question will come from traditional investigations, forensic investigations, and there is room for investigation in China. But this kind of investigation will require the cooperation of the Chinese government and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This form of investigation It will take the form of inspections, checking laboratory facilities, checking laboratory notebooks, checking electronic databases, checking freezer samples, extracting samples from the freezer and performing sequencing, interviewing staff, from ground managers and maintenance personnel to security personnel, to All personnel, including laboratory staff and management personnel, should interview them one by one in private without government supervision. This will require access to the medical records of these personnel and the serological samples of these personnel."
But so far, Beijing has been tough. In a call with Secretary of State Brinken, Yang Jiechi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, accused the leak of the new crown virus from the Wuhan laboratory as a "ridiculous story" fabricated by some people in the United States. He said that China expresses serious concern about this and urges the US not to politicize the traceability issue and to focus on international cooperation in fighting the epidemic.
The World Health Organization also recently stated that they cannot force China to provide more information on the source of the new coronavirus. Michael Ryan, the executive director of the organization's emergency project, was asked on June 7 how the WHO forced China to be more open and said, "The WHO has no power to force anyone in this regard."
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But Ebright believes that even without China’s cooperation, the United States is still capable of launching relevant investigations within the United States.
He said: "The key point here is that all the work done by the Wuhan Institute of Virology on bat SARS-related coronaviruses is carried out through contract cooperation with an NGO. This NGO is located in New York City and is named ' EcoHealth Alliance' (EcoHealth Alliance), therefore, the'EcoHealth Alliance' will have electronic and paper documents in its hard disk and file cabinets. These documents may provide very important and useful information for solving the origin problem, and they will apply for it. Funding proposals, grant progress reports, raw data from the Wuhan laboratory, analysis data from the Wuhan laboratory, draft scientific papers written with the Wuhan laboratory, and extensive correspondence with the Wuhan laboratory. These are the American public and American policies. The information that the makers need to obtain because we pay for it. We provided $123 million, which was provided by the federal government to the Eco-Health Alliance for this and other projects."
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Peter Daszak, president of the "Ecological Health Alliance", is the only expert from the United States in the expert team sent by the WHO to China to investigate the source of the virus. According to a report from Vanity Fair, the three candidate panel members nominated by the U.S. government—a U.S. FDA veterinarian, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) epidemiologist, and U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) None of the virologists were selected.
Ebright said that the U.S. Congress or the Department of Justice should promptly initiate an investigation and summon relevant personnel. Matthew Pottinger, who served as the US Deputy National Security Adviser in the Trump Administration, also said earlier that the US Congress should establish a cross-party investigative committee to investigate the theory that the new crown virus originated from laboratory escape.
Boming testified at a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on June 8: “I think a bipartisan committee with subpoena power should be established quickly. I think we need to stop the (virus) gain-of function. -function) research, and take the lead on a global scale, and restore Obama’s ban on functional gain research. The ban is intended to help predict the current pandemic, but it may actually plant the seeds for this pandemic. "
Those who support the theory that the new coronavirus comes from laboratory leakage believe that the functional gain study of viruses can increase the pathogenicity and infectivity of pathogens by cross-mixing different types of viruses. It has a high risk and may cause viruses. leakage.
China's rebuttal
Chinese state media "Global Times" published a report on the English website on June 9 that Yuan Zhiming, director of the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, stated that they kept serum samples for laboratory staff every year and did not receive any For reports of abnormal diseases, all staff tested negative for antibodies to the new coronavirus. Regarding the positive influenza cases from October to November 2019, he said that this was a retrospective study conducted by the institute in cooperation with Wuhan Union Medical College Hospital. A total of 1,001 samples were collected from hospital patients. There were no samples in December 2019. Positive samples were found, and four cases of influenza and new coronavirus mixed infections were found in 700 samples in January 2020. The report said that these four cases of mixed infection were not laboratory staff of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
This seems to be a response to the three researchers from Wuhan Institute of Virology that the Wall Street Journal reported exclusively in May based on an intelligence report from the U.S. Department of State, who went to the hospital for treatment after developing serious illness in November 2019. That report led to the theory that the virus leaked from the laboratory to a certain extent, once again attracted public attention.
Ebright told VOA that this statement was inconsistent with and contradicted the information provided by the Chinese government to the WHO traceability investigation expert group, and it was also inconsistent with the information obtained by the Australian and US governments.
The spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Wang Wenbin once again called the leak of the new crown virus from a laboratory a "rumor" and said that the United States should open the Ft. Detrick biological base in Maryland for the WHO to carry out. Virus traceability investigation.
Ebright said that this is the Chinese government's diversion of attention from the source of the virus. He said: "A key issue to remember here is that genetic evolution analysis, that is, the family tree of virus sequences, shows that the virus came from Wuhan, clearly showing that it came from Hubei Province, between September and November 2009 ( Originated from) Wuhan or nearby, so the time and place of the virus appearing are known. There is no ambiguity. (China) said that the virus appeared in Fort Detrick or near Fort Detrick , There is no possibility, it is zero!"
https://www.voachinese.com/a/us-coronavirus-origins-investigation-20210611/5925697.html
