Records of nine people may hold key to Covid origin, says Anthony Fauci

The White House’s top medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, cites medical records of nine people in China as key to genesis of the pandemic.

Workers next to a cage with mice, right, in 2017 inside the P4 disease-research laboratory in Wuhan, capital of China's Hubei province, when it was in a trial stage before its operations formally began about the beginning of 2018. A P4 lab is one accredited at biosafety level IV, with secure handling of waste and adequate staff protection against pathogens. Picture: AFP

The White House’s top medical adviser has called on China to make public the medical records of nine people, which he says may hold the key to the genesis of the coronavirus pandemic.

Anthony Fauci wants Beijing to release details of why three researchers at Wuhan’s Institute of Virology were admitted to hospital in November 2019.

Recent reports have suggested that they had Covid-like symptoms and, if confirmed, it would add grist to the idea that the virus emanated from the laboratory.

China has angrily denied such a suggestion. It says that the virus became prevalent in humans after somebody came into contact with an infected animal.

Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and White House adviser Anthony Fauci last January. Picture: AFP

“I would like to see the medical records of the three people who are reported to have got sick in 2019,” Dr Fauci told the Financial Times. “Did they really get sick and, if so, what did they get sick with?”

He is also interested in the fate of six miners who in 2012 fell ill after entering a bat cave. Three of them died.

Researchers from the Wuhan laboratory later visited the cave and took samples from the bats.

“What do the medical records of those people say? Was there [a] virus in those people? What was it? It is entirely conceivable that the origins of [Covid-19 were] in that cave and either started spreading naturally or went through the lab,” Dr Fauci said.

An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory, left, on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China. The lab conducts research on the world's most dangerous diseases and has been said by some top US officials to be the possible source of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Picture: AFP

The idea that the virus somehow escaped from the Wuhan lab has gained currency in recent weeks.

It had previously been dismissed as a conspiracy theory perpetrated by figures on the American right, including Donald Trump. However, the revelation of the researchers’ illness has prompted President Joe Biden to order the US intelligence community to report on whether there is credible evidence of a “lab leak”.

Dr Fauci, 80, has become a hate figure on the right over his lockdown advice and, more recently, a perceived closeness to scientists in China with whom he has swapped emails. In the exchanges, he appeared to pour cold water on the leak theory.

In another interview, Dr Fauci said he still thought that it was likely that the virus jumped species.

“I still believe the most likely origin is from an animal species to a human, but I keep an absolutely open mind that if there may be other origins of that, there may be another reason, it could have been a lab leak,” he told CNN.

The Times