March 22, 2021
Did covid-19 escape from a Wuhan lab? The WHO report can’t be the final word.
The World Health Organization’s final report on its investigation into covid-19’s origin is due any day now. But a major revelation has already emerged: This month, two members of the WHO investigative team acknowledged that lab workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China were sick — from what, it is not yet clear — in fall 2019, before the public coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.
That information confirms an assertion in a Jan. 15 statement by the State Department (where I worked at the time), and it represents the sort of fact pattern that investigators would expect if covid originated with an accidental lab leak, one of several possible but unproven theories.
No government, no public health official, no one affected by covid should accept such unserious explanations.
So will the final WHO report focus on the Wuhan Institute of Virology? Don’t count on it. Because the same WHO investigators who — responding to media inquiries — confirmed the existence of the sick lab workers immediately played down the importance of the information.
Read the full article from The Washington Post.
More from CNAS
-
The Quad Plus the Philippines
Reports
Introduction As the United States increasingly looks to multilateral partnerships to meet challenges in the Indo-Pacific, the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the United Sta...
By Lisa Curtis, Evan Wright & Nathaniel Schochet
-
Free Expression Encore: The Best of 2024
Podcast
Free Expression's final episode of 2024 features some of Wall Street Journal editor at large Gerry Baker's best interviews of the year, including conversations with Richard Fo...
By Richard Fontaine
-
Trump 2.0 and Security in Asia
Video
Donald Trump is bringing his "America First" agenda back to U.S. foreign policy. What could this mean for Japan and the partners in Asia? Akira Igata, an Adjunct Senior Fellow...
By Akira Igata
-
Syria: What Happened and What Comes Next
Video
After more than a decade of civil war involving major interventions from foreign powers, over the past week a rebel alliance incredibly rapidly gained control of city after ci...
By Richard Fontaine
