China ‘endangered other countries by hiding evidence'

Leaked dossier claims China intentionally hid or destroyed evidence of COVID-19 outbreak.

The P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan. Picture: AFP

A leaked dossier claims China intentionally hid or destroyed evidence of the COVID-19 outbreak to the “endangerment of other countries”.

The Saturday Telegraph reported the document — prepared by concerned western governments — concluded China’s secrecy amounted to an “assault on international transparency” and cost tens of thousands of lives.

The 15-page research document alleged the Chinese government covered-up news of the virus by silencing or “disappearing” doctors who spoke out, destroying evidence of it in laboratories and refusing to provide live samples to international scientists who were working on a vaccine.

China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an “assault on international transparency’’ that cost tens of thousands of lives, according to a dossier prepared by concerned Western governments on the COVID-19 contagion.https://t.co/KE893jbWCo

— The Daily Telegraph (@dailytelegraph) May 2, 2020

The paper outlined “the suppression and destruction of evidence”, the “deadly denial of human-to-human transmission” and pointed to “virus samples ordered destroyed at genomics labs, wildlife market stalls bleached, the genome sequence not shared publicly, and data on asymptomatic ‘silent carriers’ kept secret”.

It mounted a case against the Chinese government in relation to the deadly outbreak, accusing it of deliberately covering up the coronavirus by silencing doctors who spoke out, destroying evidence from the Wuhan laboratory and refusing to provide live virus samples to international scientists working on a vaccine.

Governments around the world have since January repeatedly ­demanded a live virus sample from the first batch of coronavirus cases in China. This is understood to have not been forthcoming despite its vital importance in developing a vaccine and locating the original source.

The document also allegedly revealed the Australian government trained and funded a team of Chinese scientists who had been involved in conducting various studies on the transmission of deadly coronaviruses from bats to humans, which the document admitted was extremely dangerous work.

The document cited their work discovering samples of coronavirus from a cave in the Yunnan province with striking genetic similarity to COVID-19, along with their research synthesising a bat-derived coronavirus that could not be treated.