China ‘kept silent over infected workers’: Pompeo accuse Beijing

Wuhan laboratory workers fell ill with coronavirus symptoms months before China admitted to the outbreak, Washington says.

Workers at a laboratory in Wuhan fell ill with symptoms similar to coronavirus months before China admitted to the outbreak, the US government says.

Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, released a “fact sheet” questioning whether the pandemic might have originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology rather than from human contact with infected animals.

Mr Pompeo, who steps down this week, said that since at least 2016 its scientists had been conducting experiments on a bat coronavirus similar to the one that causes COVID-19. He said that the institute, ostensibly civilian, had done work for the military, including animal tests, since at least 2017.

On Thursday investigators from the World Health Organisation (WHO) arrived in Wuhan to begin a report on how the pandemic originated. They are being isolated in a hotel and holding online meetings with the Chinese. They are not expected to visit the institute and will be monitored closely.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Picture: AFP.

The fact sheet said: “Today’s revelations just scratch the surface of what is still hidden about COVID-19’s origin. Any credible investigation into the origin of COVID-19 demands complete, transparent access to the research labs in Wuhan, including their facilities, samples, personnel, and records. As the world continues to battle this pandemic – and as WHO investigators begin their work, after more than a year of delays – the virus’s origin remains uncertain.

“The United States will do everything it can to support a credible and thorough investigation, including by continuing to demand transparency on the part of Chinese authorities.”

Essential workers in Nangong, a town in Hebei province with 49 cases of the virus, have been ordered to live at their workplace under threat of arrest until an outbreak of coronavirus is defeated. The rest of the town’s 500,000 population have been ordered to stay at home or face arrest.

Nangong’s measures are the most drastic in China since the pandemic began in December 2019, harsher even than Wuhan, where it began.

Langfang, another city in Hebei, put its five million people into lockdown after finding one infection. The measures are intended to shield Beijing, which is about 35 miles away.

On Saturday Hebei reported 918 cases, 203 of them asymptomatic. Most have been reported in Shijiazhuang. Another 166 cases were added to China’s total yesterday (Sunday).

Xinhua, the state-run news agency said that a hospital with capacity for 1,500 COVID-19 patients had just been built in Nangong. A hospital twice the size is being built in Shijiazhuang.

Infections were spreading unusually fast and were “harder to handle” than in previous outbreaks, the National Health Commission said. In a statement it blamed people or goods arriving from overseas, saying: “They are all imported from abroad.”

The Times