A Wuhan laboratory accused of being the source of coronavirus was claimed to have carried out tests in bats from caves where the disease had originated.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has performed coronavirus studies on mammals collected in Yunnan, more than 1,000 miles away, funded by a US government grant of $3.7 m (£ 3 m).
Covid-19 genome sequencing has linked this to bats living in caves in Yunnan.
The deadly virus was initially believed to have originated from the city’s so-called “wet market,” although there has been considerable evidence connecting the disease with the laboratory of the city.
Top government officials said that even though ‘the majority of medical opinion’ was that perhaps the deadly virus had first been spread from a live animal market in Wuhan to humans, an outbreak at the Chinese city laboratory was ‘no longer dismissed.’
It was reported that, Institute scientists worked on bats as part of a project sponsored by the U.S. National Health Institutes that permits it to earn American funds.
As per one anonymously sourced story, after being sprayed with blood carrying the virus, scientists at the institute may have been contaminated and then transmitted it on to the local population.
Chinese scientist Shi Zhengli, a leading expert on coronaviruses and regarded as the ‘Bat Woman’ of China, has also emerged “muddled” after discovering the genetic makeup of Covid-19 – critical for testing and vaccine production.
The £ 30 million Wuhan Institute of Virology is the Chinese mainland’s most sophisticated laboratory of its kind and is located ten miles from the now notorious “wet market”
Research published in November 2017 in a paper entitled: “Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus.”
‘China and the UK have strongly shared opinions on the origin of the virus, and have reached consensus.
Cao Bin, a Wuhan hospital doctor, has pointed out reports finding that 13 of the first 41 patients infected with the infection had no business connection.
“It is obvious that the seafood market is not the main cause of the infection,” he told Science magazine.
Dominic Raab said, ‘The UK is firmly opposed to the politicization of the Covid-19 epidemic and completely agrees with China that the cause of the virus is a scientific issue demanding clinical and scientific assessment.’