WashingtonTimes | Chinese government
researchers isolated more than 2,000 new viruses, including deadly bat
coronaviruses, and carried out scientific work on them just three miles
from a wild animal market identified as the epicenter of the COVID-19
pandemic.
Several Chinese state media outlets in recent months touted the virus research and lionized in particular a key researcher in Wuhan, Tian Junhua, as a leader in bat virus work.
The coronavirus strain now infecting hundreds
of thousands of people globally mutated from bats believed to have
infected animals and people at a wild animal market in Wuhan. The exact origin of the virus, however, remains a mystery.
Reports of the extensive Chinese research on bat viruses likely will
fuel more calls for Beijing to make public what it knows about such
work.
“This is one of the worst cover-ups in human
history, and now the world is facing a global pandemic,” Rep. Michael T.
McCaul, Texas Republican and ranking member of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, said last week. Mr. McCaul has said China should be held accountable for the pandemic.
A video posted online in December and funded by the Chinese government shows Mr. Tian inside caves in Hubei province taking samples from captured bats and storing them in vials.
“I am not a doctor, but I work to cure and save people,” Mr. Tian says in the video. “I am not a soldier, but I work to safeguard an invisible national defense line.”
