Wuhan lab pleaded for help with disinfectants, airtight suits

Newly unearthed emails from Fauci-led US agency reveal Chinese virus researchers in 2016 asked for help with decontaminating suits and surfaces

More than 300 pages of emails between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and a US health agency headed by Dr Anthony Fauci have been uncovered, revealing that in 2016 officials at the Chinese lab at the centre of global investigations into the source of the pandemic pleaded for advice on how to deal with the decontamination and disinfection of airtight suits and lab surfaces.

The documents — uncovered by a Freedom of Information request by the Washington DC-based advocacy group Judicial Watch — also show significant collaboration between Dr Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

According to the emails, NIAID gave nine grants to the controversial EcoHealth Alliance, headed by Dr Peter Daszak, for research in China to study such topics as the “risk of viral emergence from bats”, “understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence”, and “Comparative Spillover Dynamics of Avian Influenza in Endemic Countries.”

Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci. Picture: AFP

The NIAID was also the US National Institutes of Health’s top donor to the Wuhan Institute.

And in an indicator of possible lax infection control procedures at the lab, the emails also contain a 2016 plea with the subject line “asking for help” from Wuhan Institute of Virology director Yuan Zhiming looking for advice about “the disinfectants for decontamination of airtight suits and surface decontamination.”

“We have tried several ones do (sic) determine their antiviral efficacy and corrosion to pipeline and wastewater treatment equipment. Unfortunately, we have found a good candidate. I hope you can give us some help, to give us some suggestion for the choice of disinfectants used in P4 laboratory,” the email read in part.

An aerial view of the P4 laboratory on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan. Picture: AFP

Shi Zhengli. Director of the Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The email was later forwarded in an email chain dated March, 2020, after the pandemic broke out, between NIH and NIAID officials, under the subject heading, “navigating politics”.

While China and much of the medical establishment maintained that the Covid-19 pandemic emerged naturally, likely through the mutation of a coronavirus already present in bats, investigators around the world have given increasing credence to theories that the pandemic may have started when a virus being manipulated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology escaped as a result of a lab accident.

The newly unearthed emails also reveal that in 2018 the NIAID’s representative in China, Dr Ping Chen, discovered that scientists at the Institute had discovered ““a type of new flu vaccine using nanotechnology” but that Chinese officials had blocked all reference to it on the internet.

“The intranasal nano-vaccine can target broad-spectrum flu viruses and induces robust immune responses,” the note read.

However, it added, “the effort of searching more information on this vaccine has gone nowhere … Chinese media has now blocked all mention of this announcement.

“It is unclear why this scientific-based research development has been censored as the Chinese government usually welcomes the announcement of scientific breakthroughs and has generally been open to discussions on flu.”

The revelations came as David Asher, who previously worked as the US State Department’s lead investigator into the origins of the pandemic suggested that a cash reward be given for information.

“How about $15 million to the first scientist out of the Wuhan Institute that defects to the United States or Australia?” he told ABC’s 7:30.