Beijing has been accused of “endless cover-ups” around Covid by a scientist who claimed that China sequenced the virus’ genome five days before the world knew of the outbreak.
The comments were made by virologist Professor Edward Holmes of the University of Sydney to colleagues in a private channel in the messaging software Slack in March 2020.
The channel was set up in February to discuss the writing of a Nature Medicine paper, ultimately published on March 17, 2020.
The research analyzed the genome of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes Covid — and concluded that it was not lab-made or -manipulated.
Large portions of the exchanges on Slack were recently released via an investigation into the “Proximal Origin” paper by the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Having access to SARS-CoV-2’s genome was essential for understanding the nature of the virus and identifying targets for therapeutics and ultimately the development of vaccines.
The comments about China’s early sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 were made by Prof. Holmes’ to his colleague Professor Kristian Andersen — an evolutionary biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.
Prof. Holmes wrote: “Kristian — don’t be fooled by George Gao. The CDC had a genome sequence on Dec. 26th [2019].”
He continued: “They told people it would not pass between humans. Endless cover-ups.”
The CDC being referred to is the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the director of which from August 2017 to July 2022 was virologist Professor George Fu Gao.
It was not until December 31, 2019 — five days after the Chinese CDC is said to have had the sequence — that China contacted the World Health Organisation to notify them of “cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology” detected in the city of Wuhan.
According to The Mail on Sunday, the SARS-CoV-2 sequences collected on December 26, 2019 were derived from a sample collected from an infected delivery van.
The sample was reportedly sent to a diagnostic laboratory in Guangzhou, in southeast China, for analysis — and the findings were flagged the next day with China’s CDC, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and hospital chiefs across Wuhan.
A sequence of the virus’ genome was first publicly shared by Prof. Holmes, his long-time associate Professor Zhang Yongzhen, and their colleagues on January 10, 2020.
Elsewhere in the thread, Prof. Holmes attributed Beijing’s lack of transparency to misguided efforts to “save face”, as well as the Communist Party of China’s “control freak” tendencies around public messaging.
On April 17, 2020, he wrote: “China are definitely trying to rewrite what happened, but I’m pretty certain that’s because they don’t want anyone to think about the origin in any context, rather than trying to suppress the lab escape theory.
“They’ve been trying to suppress this from day one in December because the word ‘SARS’ is just so toxic to the regime.”
Thirteen days later, he added: “For China, I think it’s a large part about saving face and the perceived shame of being the place where the outbreak started.
“It has seriously weakened their global standing, so they are trying to change the narrative to sow uncertainty around this.”
He added: “The China CDC are guilty of bungling the early response to this… but that’s c***-up, not conspiracy.”
Professor Bryce Rickels is a geneticist at Rutgers University and the co-founder of BioSafety Now, a group that campaigns against the creation of novel pathogens in laboratories.
He told Mail on Sunday: “As more information about the early stages of the pandemic emerges, we see a disturbing pattern of efforts to hide critical information.”
The geneticist noted that while attempts to manipulate public opinion around COVID-19 may have begun in China, such was later echoed in the US and around the world.
Follow our social media accounts on https://www.facebook.com/ExpressUSNews and @ExpressUSNews
