A researcher from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) claimed on Wednesday that China allegedly engineered the coronavirus as a “bioweapon.”
Revelations
In an interview shared by ANI, Jennifer Zeng — a member of the International Press Association — spoke with WIV researcher Chao Shao, who said that he and his colleagues were presented with four strains of the coronavirus to determine which of them could spread most effectively among various species, including humans. The interview was taken sometime between March and April 2020.
The researcher further mentioned that several of his colleagues had gone missing during the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan.
One of the missing researchers later disclosed that they had been sent to hotels accommodating international athletes to help “inspect health and hygiene conditions.” However, Chao believes that their real purpose was to spread the virus, as checking hygiene conditions did not require virologists.
You must spread this like mad.
— Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng 曾錚真言 (@jenniferzeng97) June 27, 2023
First-ever explosive admission from #ShaoChao (单超 ) #WIV (#WuhanInstituteofVirology) researcher, vice director of #Wuhan #P4Lab: I Was Given 4 Strains of #Coronavirus to Select the Most Infectious one in Feb 2019. They were artificial, engineered… pic.twitter.com/pNNPugwwli
He also claimed that, in April 2020, he was sent to Xinjiang to assess the health of Uyghur individuals residing in re-education camps, insinuating that the trip was a guise to either spread the virus or observe its effects on humans, as a virologist’s expertise is unnecessary during health checks.
Notably, Chao stressed that the information represented only a small fraction of the larger puzzle surrounding the origins of the pandemic, which has killed nearly seven million people globally.
No Evidence
The latest comments come days after US intelligence agencies said they had failed to find any direct evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic originated from an incident at China’s WIV.
A declassified four-page report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said that although the intelligence community still could not rule out the possibility of the virus originating from a lab leak, it had not been able to discover the origins of the pandemic.